Neuronavigation Technology

Neuronavigation provides intraoperative orientation to the surgeons helps in planning a precise surgical approach to the targeted lesion and defines the surrounding neurovascular structures. Preoperative planning and intraoperative identification of anatomic landmarks are especially important in neurosurgery since they help to avoid or minimize surgical morbidity and mortality. Evidence from recent studies has shown that integration of functional brain mapping using fMRI and magnetoencephalography (MEG) with neuronavigation in surgical decision-making offers the chances of more radical resections with minimal morbidity and helps to avoid the eloquent areas of the brain during surgery. Although neuronavigation technology has been found to be useful in procedures such as skull base tumors, syringomyelia, medulla tumors, aneurysms, and endoscopy guidance, so far, the technology has been mostly applied to improve surgery in the brain tissue. The procedure allows very precise intracranial and spinal surgery. Since neurosurgical intervention remains the mainstay of diagnostic and therapeutic management of brain tumor, accurate localization of brain lesions is necessary and important. Recent studies have demonstrated that frameless stereotactic neuronavigational systems provide improved localization accuracy of brain lesions compared with traditional methods of localization that involve only the use of neuroimaging and surface anatomy. Because the neuronavigation system displays 3-dimensional reconstructions of lesions, vessels, nerves, and fiber tracks during surgery, and makes use of image fusion techniques, neuronavigation is now a procedure of choice for brain surgery. The use of the neurosurgical navigation system has been shown to improve the post operative quality of life of patients suffering from brain and spinal tumors. It offers several advantages including improved medical outcomes, shorter hospitalizations, and better and faster surgical procedures with fewer complications. Thus, this remarkable technology which has proven to be an effective tool for several neurosurgical applications has revolutionized the practice of neurosurgery.