Image guided surgery for the resection of brain tumours.

Extent of resection is believed to be a key prognostic factor in neuro-oncology. Image guided surgery uses a variety of tools or technologies to help achieve this goal. It is not clear whether any of these, sometimes very expensive, tools (or their combination) should be recommended as part of standard care for patient with brain tumours. We set out to determine if image guided surgery offers any advantage in terms of extent of resection over surgery without any image guidance and if any one tool or technology was more effective.