BACKGROUND Intracranial malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors are rare entities that carry a poor prognosis. To date, there are no established therapeutic strategies for these tumors. METHODS We review the present treatment modalities and present the current therapeutic dilemmas. We perform a statistical analysis to evaluate the prognostic factors for Overall Survival of these patients. Ad...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW From its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, psychosurgery (or, neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders) has had a gradual decline, with only a few centers around the world continuing with the procedure into the 1980s and 1990s. With recent developments in brain stimulation techniques, the continuing relevance of psychosurgery in the treatment of psychiatric disorders is worthy of exa...

We describe a new technique permitting the mapping of neural connections in the living human brain. The method combines two well established tools of brain research: transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and positron emission tomography (PET). We use TMS to stimulate directly a selected cortical area while simultaneously measuring changes in brain activity, indexed by cerebral blood flow (CBF...

BACKGROUND Stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) is an invasive diagnostic procedure in epilepsy surgery that is usually implemented with frame-based methods. OBJECTIVE To describe a new technique of frameless SEEG and report a prospective case series at a single center. METHODS Image integration and planning of electrode trajectories were performed preoperatively on specialized software and ...

Pineal cysts occur in all ages, predominantly in adults in the fourth decade of life. In series of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, the prevalence of pineal cysts ranged between 1.3% and 4.3% of patients examined for various neurologic reasons and up to 10.8% of asymptomatic healthy volunteers. The diagnosis of pineal cyst is usually established by MRI with defined radiological criteri...

BACKGROUND In stereotactic operations, intraoperative imaging is crucial in several stages of the procedure. The aim was to utilize the O-arm intraoperatively for (1) planning the trajectories of stereotactic instruments, (2) calculating the coordinates of the targets, (3) identification of normal intracranial structures, (4) verification of the trajectories of the stereotactic instruments, and...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a newly developed robot-assisted frameless stereotactic system for deep electrode implantation and radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RFTC). Deep-electrode implantation was performed in the bilateral mesial temporal lobes of seven patients. Following the implantation of the deep electrodes through the monitored designed path...

Stereotactic apparatus to guide surgical devices started being researched in 1908, yet today’s neurosurgery still rely on stereotactic frames developed almost half a century ago. Robots excel at handling spatial information and thus are an obvious candidate for guiding instrumentation along precisely planned trajectories. In this review, we introduce the concept of stereotaxy and we then descri...

The use of robotic technology in the surgical treatment of brain tumour promises increased precision and accuracy in the performance of surgery. Robotic manipulators may allow superior access to narrow surgical corridors compared to freehand or conventional neurosurgery. This paper reports values and ranges of tool-tissue interaction forces during the performance of glioma surgery using an MR c...