[Conservative neurosurgery]

"Conservative neurosurgery" is an evident concept. Preservation of brain is by all means the goal of neurosurgical operations because there are no possibilities of compensation in case of lesion of brain parenchyma, either complete or partial. However, there is a great variability of functionnally eloquent areas in the brain; so a lesion may induce or not visible neurological deficits as function of the location of the lesion. The goal of this review article is to scan means used in neurosurgery to spare parenchymal brain, which is often called "minimal invasive neurosurgery" with a special interest of recent and current progress of morphological and functional imaging of the brain.