During the last years in spine surgery has become more urgent the need for a safe method to improve pedicle screw placement. A safe and correct placement can have many important consequences, both clinical (development of new symptoms) and medico-legal. The most widespread and used tool is neuronavigation. In literature, many studies have compared the precision of screw placement between free-h...

Two patients presented with congenital basilar invagination manifesting as progressive myelopathy. Both patients underwent surgery using a neuronavigation-assisted transoral-transpharyngeal approach. The Brain-LAB Vector Vision navigation system was used for image guidance. The registration accuracies were 0.9 and 1.3 mm. After decompression, posterior stabilization was performed. Both patients...

This paper is focused on the human factors analysis comparing a standard neuronavigation system with an augmented reality system. We use a passive articulated arm (Microscribe, Immersion technology) to track a calibrated end-effector mounted video camera. In real time, we superimpose the live video view with the synchronized graphical view of CT-derived segmented object(s) of interest within a ...

A key issue in the field of noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is the accurate localization of scalp positions that correspond to targeted cortical areas. The current gold standard is to combine structural and functional brain imaging with a commercially available "neuronavigation" system. However, neuronavigation systems are not commonplace outside of specialized research environments. Here ...

This paper presents a MRI-free neuronavigation technique for repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). This method is composed of three steps: 1) surface sampling of the subject’s scalp and face thanks to a 3D tracker, followed by Poisson surface reconstruction, 2) non-linear surface registration of an atlas surface to the extracted surface using an efficient modified non-linear EM-I...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a tool for inducing transient disruptions of neural activity noninvasively in conscious human volunteers. In recent years, the investigative domain of TMS has expanded and now encompasses causal structure-function relationships across the whole gamut of cognitive functions and associated cortical brain regions. Consequently, the importance of how to de...

OBJECT The authors conducted a study to evaluate the clinical outcome in 50 patients with lesions around the motor cortex who underwent surgery in which functional neuronavigation was performed. METHODS The sensorimotor cortex was identified in all patients with the use of magnetoencephalography (MEG). The MEG-source localizations were superimposed onto a three-dimensional magnetic resonance ...

AIM The study aimed to examine the position of three-dimensional (3D) neurosonography and the advantages and disadvantages of ultrasound-based neuronavigation in spinal cord tumour surgery. MATERIAL AND METHODS During the period July, 2007- February 2011, 28 patients with spinal cord tumours were operated in our neurosurgical clinic. All patients underwent intraoperative 3D neurosonography by...

OBJECTIVE Three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound is an intraoperative imaging modality used in neuronavigation as an alternative to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This article summarizes 4 years of clinical experience in the use of intraoperative 3-D ultrasound integrated into neuronavigation for guidance in brain tumor resection. METHODS Patients were selected for inclusion in the study on th...

OBJECTIVE Glioma heterogeneity and the limitations of conventional structural MRI for identifying aggressive tumor components can limit the reliability of stereotactic biopsy and, hence, tumor characterization, which is a hurdle for developing and selecting effective treatment strategies. In vivo MR spectroscopy (MRS) and PET enable noninvasive imaging of cellular metabolism relevant to prolife...