Surgical options for Parkinson's disease (PD) are rapidly expanding and include ablative procedures, deep brain stimulation, and cell transplantation. The target nuclei for ablative surgery and deep brain stimulation are the motor thalamus, the globus pallidus, and the subthalamic nucleus. Multiple factors have led to the resurgence of interest in the surgical treatment of PD: 1) recognition th...

This contribution introduces a computer- and robot-assisted framework for stereotactic neurosurgery on small animals. Two major elements of this framework are presented in detail: a robotic stereotactic assistant and the software framework for placement of probes into the brain. The latter integrates modules for registration, insertion control, and preoperative path planning. Two options for pa...

The resection of deep-seated brain tumors has been associated with morbidity due to injury to critical neural structures during the approach. Recent technological advancements in navigation and stereotaxy, surgical planning, brain tractography and minimal-access brain ports present the opportunity to overcome such limitations. Here, we present the case of a pediatric patient with a left thalami...

Treatment of intracranial tumoral lesions is related to its correct histological diagnostic. We present a retrospective analysis of 32 patients submitted to 36 cerebral biopsies using neuronavigation and 44 patients using frame-based stereotaxy. Mean age was 46.6 and 49.3 years old respectively. Sex distribution in both groups was 50% for each. Most of lesions were lobar in both groups. Diagnos...

Advances in medical imaging, together with the development of many new minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, have had a huge impact on the practice of neurosurgery. Image-guided, minimally invasive methods that use microinstruments, lasers, catheters, and endoscopes are achieving results comparable to or better than those obtained with traditional surgical resection. Better ...

Surgical treatment of primary brain tumors remains a considerable challenge for the neurosurgeon. Nonetheless, surgery is the mainstay of glioma therapy because it provides the means of obtaining absolute tissue diagnosis, mapping tumor margins, mechanical cytoreduction, and guidance of adjuvant therapy such as brachytherapy, gene therapy, or radiosurgery. Recent developments in computation tec...