Visualization of three dimensional brain atlases for image guided neurosurgery

In this paper, a novel and reliable approach is proposed to visualize three dimensional (3D) brain atlases for image-guided neurosurgery. Since the existing atlas is either in 2D or a 3D atlas, we firstly apply nonlinear interpolation on digitized 2D TT atlas [3], and pre-registered it into a referenced MRI data with defined AC-PC coordinate. Meanwhile, we apply a Fast Marching and Morphological Reconstruction segmentation to the same referenced MRI data to create a 3D atlas. Hence the two atlases are mediately registered together. Then, the dissect names of the ROIs (Regions of Interest) are labeled according to the gray values of the atlases. Finally, the 3D visualization of the atlases is implemented and it is integrated into the neurosurgical operating system. The system is tested by a neurosurgon to be useful for clinical application.