Stereotactic Surgery

Stereotaxy or the stereotactic surgery is an invasive form of surgical intervention that will be making a three-dimensional coordinate system in order to locate small targets inside the body to execute few actions like biopsy, ablation, lesion, stimulation, injection, radiosurgery (SRS), implantation etc.

Stereotactic surgery will work on the basis of three main elements:

A stereotactic planning system will include Atlas, coordinates calculator, multimodality image matching tools etc. A stereotactic apparatus or device A stereotactic placement procedure and localization

Modern stereotactic planning systems are based on computers. The stereotactic atlas is a sequence of the cross section of an anatomical structure (for example, a human brain), represented in reference to a two-coordinate frame. So, each brain structure will be easily allocated a range of three coordinate numbers, that will be used for positioning the stereotactic device. In most of the atlases, there are three dimensions: lateral-lateral (x), dorsoventral (y) and rostrocaudal (z).

The stereotactic apparatus intend to use a set of three coordinates (x, y, and z) in the orthogonal frame of reference (cartesian coordinates) or a polar coordinate system with three coordinates like the angle, depth, and anteroposterior location. The mechanical device has head-holding bars and clamps that will put the head in a fixed position in order to reference to a coordinate system (the origin or zero). In small animals laboratory, these are generally bone landmarks that are known to bear a constant spatial relation to soft tissue.

Presently, a number of manufacturers will produce stereotactic devices to fit in for neurosurgery in humans and also for animal experimentation.