2005 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 33-41
Neurosurgeons generally decide on the location to make an incision of a patient head at a surgical planning meeting. In the meeting, doctors speculate the 3-D image of a patient by using models of a normal brain, mannequins and the (2-D) slice images (MR, CT and so on). However, doctors have the different image of a patient because they have the different knowledge and experiences. Therefore, interactive surgical planning systems, which have tools to discuss about the approach of the operation (for example, the location to make an incision) with the 3-D patient data interactively in a virtual space, are useful for doctors to compensate the difference of the 3-D image between them at the meeting. In our research, we develop a fast volume editing method, which is based on texture-based volume visualization and use partial textures, to mark on the patient head and sulcus, and to remove tissue of the head and the tumor. Finally, we evaluate our method by questionnaires to neurosurgeons.
