Evaluation of a Neurosurgical Planning System “SEI” in Patients with Brain Tumors

Abstract

An effective interface of a three-dimensional (3-D) interactive visualization tool helps neurosurgeons to diagnose abnormalities in patients and to determine the optimal surgical approach. In this paper, we have introduced our newly developed software Synchronous Editable Interface (SEI), which can interactively display and edit3-D and two-dimensional (2-D) images, and evaluated our proposed method by comparing with films of2-D images in determining the surgical approach in patients with brain tumors. A significant difference was observed between SEI and reading of2-D image films by neurosurgeons, thus demonstrating the usefulness of SEI in determining the surgical approach to brain tumor. In conclusion, the feasibility of SEI in determining the surgical approach to brain tumor was confirmed.