Comparison of core needle breast biopsy techniques: freehand versus three-dimensional US guidance.

Rationale And Objectives: No single method is generally accepted for evaluating the accuracy of breast biopsy techniques before their clinical implementation. The purpose of this study was to test a new process for evaluating biopsy techniques by using it in the evaluation of a prototype three-dimensional ultrasound (US)-guided biopsy device.

Materials And Methods: The biopsy accuracy of a new three-dimensional US-guided breast biopsy device was compared to that of the accepted clinical practice of biopsy by expert radiologists with two-dimensional freehand US guidance.

Automatic fusion of freehand endoscopic brain images to three-dimensional surfaces: creating stereoscopic panoramas.

A major limitation of the use of endoscopes in minimally invasive surgery is the lack of relative context between the endoscope and its surroundings. The purpose of this work was to fuse images obtained from a tracked endoscope to surfaces derived from three-dimensional (3-D) preoperative magnetic resonance or computed tomography (CT) data, for assistance in surgical planning, training and guidance. We extracted polygonal surfaces from preoperative CT images of a standard brain phantom and digitized endoscopic video images from a tracked neuro-endoscope.