Registration of laser range image of cortical surface to preoperative brain MR images for image-guided neurosurgery : Preliminary results

Neurosurgical navigation systems using preoperative images have a problem in their accuracy caused by brain deformation during surgery. To address this problem the use of laser range scanner in order to obtain intraoperative cortical surface, is under study in our currently developing neurosurgical navigation system. This paper presents preliminary results of registration of intraoperatively acquired range and color images to preoperative MR images, within the context of image-guided surgery. We register images by performing two procedures: mapping of color image on the range image; and registration between color-mapped range images and preoperative medical images. The color image is mapped on the range image using camera calibration. Point-based rigid registration of preoperative images to the intraoperative images is performed through detection and matching of common fiducials in the images. Experimental results using intraoperatively acquired range images of cortical surface demonstrated the ability to perform registrations for MR images of the brain. In the future, we will focus on incorporating the above registration results into a biomechanical model of the brain to predict brain deformation during surgical procedures.