Volume-based tumor neurosurgery planning in the Virtual Workbench

We present a virtual reality application to neurosurgical pre-operative planning which is undergoing clinical evaluation at the Singapore General Hospital. The application, based on the ISS Virtual Workbench, lets the neurosurgeon study the brain pathology, blood vessels, skull and the surrounding tissue using real-time volumetric rendering of the patient data. With this information, the surgeon can plan the best approach for surgery. At the moment, seven cases have been planned. The system features measuring markers, multi-modal data fusion of a patient's data, different visualization modes, tissue enhancement through manipulation of colour, look-up tables, cloning of region of interest, and interactive pathology outlining.