Image Guided Tool for Neurosurgery

This paper presents our approach in building an image guided navigational tool for neurosurgeons. The paper emphasizes critical methods which we have implemented within the main modules of the system, namely physical space model, calibrated frame and model transformation, MRI space model and the GUI. The surgeon is provided with special tools which contain markers which are detected by cameras to compute the real time positions of the tool tip. Special plastic markers are attached to the patient's head for the registration between two sets of coordinate systems. We were able to obtain satisfactory accuracy when equipped with low quality web cameras. Our GUI provides a modeled three-dimensional viewing of the patients head with the capability of rotating around fixed axes.