Many brain surgeries end up never being performed because the risks of making incisions based only on printouts of CAT scans and MRIs are too high.
But Compass, a US$450,000 system driven by a Sun workstation, now allows surgeons to use a heads-up display that superimposes digital images of CAT scans, MRIs, and angiogram data on the patient's brain, visually representing a tumor's boundaries while the surgery is performed.
Compass was developed under the guidance of Dr. Patrick Kelly, chairman of the neurosurgery department at New York University Medical Center. Twenty-four systems are already in use worldwide, and Kelly anticipates many major facilities will acquire them. "When patients are in a hospital that doesn't have one," he says, "they'll be sent across town to have the surgery."
ELECTRIC WORD
Road Map for Brain Surgeons
