Computer technology has developed remarkably in the field of neurosurgery during the past 10 to
20 years. Great achievements have been made recently in neuroimaging techniques and computer
technology for neuronavigation from frameless armless systems to robotic microscopes.
Contained in the present volume are all the papers presented at the International Symposium on
Computer-Assisted Neurosurgery and selected papers presented at the 6th Annual Meeting of the
Japanese Society of Computers in Neurosurgery which were held in Kobe Japan on January 24-26
1997. This volume is a comprehensive description and review of current technical ad vancements
in computer-assisted neurosurgery with a special focus on advanced intraoperative neuroimaging
various neuronavigation system robotic microscopes and strategies for preoperative and
intraoperative surgical planning using high-power workstations with three-dimensional software.
We express our thanks to the contributors for their participation and cooperation and to
Springer-Verlag for personal and technical assistance in publishing this work. We sincerely
hope that this volume will contribute to improving neurosurgical technology and outcomes.
