Plenary lectures: Problems in neurosurgery — A rich environment for engineer

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in the use of robotics to aid in neurosurgery. Purported advantages over currently available, image-guided micro-neurosurgery have been said to include an increase in precision in positioning needles used for the biopsy of tumors, and electrodes used for electrical stimulation or tissue ablation. Although such goals have been met, monetary costs have been high and real benefits, in terms of patient care, have been questioned. Numerous problems persist in neurosurgery that are not satisfactorily addressed either by conventional micro-neurosurgery or by current robot-assisted neurosurgery. Two critical areas include: (i) minimally invasive resection of hematomas and tumors deep to eloquent cortex, with minimal or no disturbance to overlying tissues; (ii) quasireal-time, intraoperative delineation of normal versus abnormal tissues, for the complete and safe resection of tumors such as gliomas. Successfully attacking these problems will require major technical advances that are uniquely suited to robotic engineering