Also, a film depicting one of the images rotating through space is available by clicking below. Click on image. Click here for film. A stereo pair of Viewing Wand images of a patient undergoing a partial frontal lobectomy for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. Functional Image Integration MRI, MRA, CT, and DSA yield anatomic information.
PET yields functional information as to the metabolic activity of regions of the brain.
Integration of PET information with MRI information gives the surgeon simultaneous access to functional and anatomic information. This may be useful to identify regions of low or zero metabolic activity which may be safely removed, or to determine the precise location of critical structures in the vicinity of a surgical site in order that they might be spared. The procedure that combines the PET and MRI images uses a landmark matching algorithm that minimizes the mean squared distance between homologous points identified in each of the two volumes. Figure 4 shows typical merged MRI and PET data, in this case for a patient undergoing surgery to remove cerebral tissue during the treatment of intractable epilepsy. The PET activity is indicated by the color scale superimposed on the underlying grey scale MRI image.