Rigid neuroendoscope navigation system for minimally invasive surgery

This paper describes a high precision navigation system that helps neurosurgeons identify more easily the neuroendoscope's tip location in the patient's brain that can significantly reduce the length and increase the accuracy of minimally invasive procedures. It is an image-guided neurosurgery system that provides integrated information of preoperative 3-D medical volumes, intra-operative neuroendoscope 2-D images, position information of the endoscope and surgical tools. The system's components include data acquisition, segmentation, multi-modal registration, 3-D surface and volume reconstruction, 3-D visualization, surgical simulation and integration of tracking systems. An articulated arm (digitizer) is used for automated registration of the 3-D model to the patient, then it is integrated with the system to dynamically localize surgical instruments and the patient's head in the patient's coordinate system. The visualization subsystem shows the position and orientation of the neuroendoscope's tip in the 3-D model of preoperative Magnetic Resonance (MR) volume and in the three orthogonal (sagittal, cronoal and axial) MR slices. The system's components and clinical applications are described.