Comparison of registration algorithms for capturing intraoperative brain shift

Recent advances in functional and diffusion imaging enable the delineation of eloquent cortex and their underlying white matter fiber bundles. Information from each of these modalities may dramatically impact the choice of surgical resection boundary, but the use of pre-surgical data for on-line, intraoperative decision making is hindered by the ongoing changes in patient anatomy during surgery. Intraoperative MRI has been developed to enable ready visualization of intraprocedural changes in the configuration of the patient, and to enable improved surgical navigation, monitoring and targeting (Schenck 1995, Nabavi 2001). We propose to increase the intraoperative utility of data acquired preoperatively by improving compensation for brain deformation, or shift, during surgery in real-time.