Application of Image Fusion on Brain Surgery

Brain surgery is generally guided by brain anatomical image, tumor removal maybe injure patients’ important tissues and functional areas, and result in death and permanent disability, these important tissue and functional areas are invisible in the anatomical image. This paper presents an image fusion software system, which can merge lesion, important tissues, brain functional image, brain atlas, fiber tract into anatomical image, and show them in 3D image. With the help of this system, surgeons can avoid important tissues and functional areas when they design surgical approach, they can also minimize intraoperative risk and postoperative deformity by the guidance of fusion image. Experiments show that the image fusion system is feasible and applicable to surgery.