What is "stereotactic volumetric resection"?

Factual Questions
1

Googling is giving me articles way outside the scope of my general knowledge and I would like to know in general what the procedure invovles.

Thanks.

2

IANAD, but well, a resection is cutting out part of an organ/tumour, stereotactic means accurately-positioned in 3D space so as to be minimally invasive, and volumetric means relating to volumes, in this case I take it meaning solid masses, but that’s the one I’m fuzzy on. But my reading of the google results seems to indicate it’s a resection technique mostly used on tumours that uses MRI/CAT info to set up a model beforehand, and using a computer-guided knife/laser/electrode to do the resectioning.

So, it’s Computer-Aided Brainsurgery, I think.

3

Yes, a buddy of mine just had a tumour removed using this procedure. (Sadly, biopsy bad news: GBMIV :frowning: )

But I’d like to know more about the process. They did put little electrodes on his head that looked like GPSs and he had an MRI, CT and all that jazz, but from the very basic info provided, it sounded like the surgery was pre-mapped somehow and then displayed to that the surgeon could cut away the tumor and stop each cut at healthy tissue. How is this done? How does the computer guide the surgeon?