Toward Real-Time Image Guided Neurosurgery using Distributed and Grid Computing

Neurosurgical resection is a therapeutic intervention in the treatment of brain tumors. Precision of the resection can be improved by utilizing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as an aid in decision making. Image registration adjusts pre-operative data according to intra-operative tissue deformation. Some of the approaches increase the registration accuracy by tracking image landmarks through the whole brain volume. High computational cost used to render these techniques inappropriate for clinical applications. In this paper we present a parallel implementation of a state of the art registration method, and a number of needed incremental improvements. Overall, we reduced the time required for registration of an average dataset from about an hour to less than seven minutes, which is within the time constraints imposed by neurosurgeons. For the first time in clinical practice we demonstrated, that with the help of distributed computing non-rigid MRI registration based on volume tracking can be computed intra-operatively.