An accurate and ergonomic method of registration for image-guided neurosurgery.

We have developed a system for accurately and conveniently achieving surgical registration for image-guided neurosurgery, based on alignment and matching of patient forehead contours. The system consists of a contour digitizer that is used in the operating room to acquire patient contours, editing software for extracting contours from patient image data sets, and a contour-match algorithm for aligning the two contours and performing data set registration. Initial tests of the individual portions of the system have found each to be robust; we are in the process of refining the design of the optical digitizer in order to further automate the procedure as well as provide increased accuracy.