Recent advances in surgical planning & navigation for tumor biopsy and resection

This paper highlights recent advancements in imaging technologies for surgical planning and navigation in tumor biopsy and resection which need high-precision in detection and characterization of lesion margin in preoperative planning and intraoperative navigation. Multimodality image-guided surgery platforms brought great benefits in surgical planning and operation accuracy via registration of various data sets with information on morphology [X-ray, magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT)], function connectivity [functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), rest-status fMRI], or molecular activity [positron emission tomography (PET)]. These image-guided platforms provide a correspondence between the pre-operative surgical planning and intra-operative procedure. We envisage that the combination of advanced multimodal imaging, three-dimensional (3D) printing, and cloud computing will play increasingly important roles in planning and navigation of surgery for tumor biopsy and resection in the coming years.