Capturing Brain Deformation

Simon K. Warfield, Ion-Florin Talos, Corey Kemper, Lauren O'Donnell, Carl-Fredrik Westin, William M. Wells III, Peter M. Black, Ferenc A. Jolesz, Ron Kikinis

Abstract: A critical challenge for the neurosurgeon during surgery is to be able to preserve healthy tissue and minimize the disruption of critical anatomical structures while at the same time removing as much tumor tissue as possible. Over the past several years we have developed intraoperative image processing algorithms with the goal of augmenting the surgeon’s capacity to achieve maximal tumor resection while minimizing the disruption to normal tissue. The brain of the patient often changes shape in a nonrigid fashion over the course of a surgery, due to loss of cerebrospinal fluid, concomitant pressure changes, the impact of anaesthetics and the surgical resection itself. This further increases the challenge of visualizing and navigating critical brain structures. The primary concept of our approach is to exploit intraoperative image acquisition to directly visualize the morphology of brain as it changes over the course of the surgery, and to enhance the surgeon’s capacity to visualize critical structures by projecting extensive preoperative data into the intraoperative configuration of the patient’s brain.