Surgical planning

The starting point was made by G. Hounsfield in the 1970s, by using CT in order to record data about the anatomical situation of the patients.

[2] In the 1980s, advances were made by the radiologist M. Vannier and his team, by creating the first computed three-dimensional reconstruction from a CT dataset.

[4] During the late 1990s, the first full computer-based virtual surgical planning was made for osteotomies, and then transferred to the operating theatre by a navigation system.

[6] The first commercially available neurosurgical planning systems appeared in the 1990s (the StealthStation by Medtronic,[7] the VectorVision by Brainlab[8]).

As newer imaging modalities emerged providing increasing anatomical and functional detail for the patient in the 2000s, these surgical planning systems started to incorporate virtual reality technology to facilitate the visualisation and manipulation of the 3D data.