An intraoperative graphic workstation to plan neurosurgical procedures

A surgical workstation for processing neuroanatomical digital images is described. Computed tomography, magnetic resonance and angiography images acquired under stereotactic conditions are transferred into a surgical console, by means of floppy disks or magnetic tape. The surgeon can then extract from the images outlines of structures of surgical interest and obtain a 3-D representation that can be used to plan a surgical approach to brain lesions. The surgical image processor is located in the operating room, where a digitizer and graphics monitor allow the surgeon to interact with the images. Different reconstruction algorithms have been implemented to meet the geometries of available stereotactic frames