We are developing a neurosurgical planning system, and this paper presents a method of automatic path searching from skin surface of the head to tumor inside the brain. The path obtained by our system is an optimal one in minimally invasive neurosurgery and it is calculated automatically based on a 3D atlas. The 3D atlas is a voxel based 3D matrix, and consists of two parts, structural part and knowledge part. The structural part includes the geometrical information with respect to each tissue. The knowledge part is generated based on experiences of doctors, and numeric value is provided as importance value for each tissue. The path searching consists of two steps, path finding and path smoothing. Path finding is to select an optimal path from surface of the head to the affected part based on minimization of importance value integrating along with the path. We applied the algorithm into a head MRI data set. The path obtained by path finding is reformed smoothly to approach the natural path of surgeon.
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