A Simple Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Method for 3D Mapping between Head Skin Tattoos and Brain Landmarks

Abstract

A successful brain surgery requires pre-surgery localization of various brain areas. An accurate craniotomy, which gives perfect access to such brain area of interest is needed and is dependent on mathematically establishing the relationship between head landmarks and structural magnetic resonance image (MRI) scans. While typical stereotactic procedures rely upon external cranial landmarks and standardized atlases for localization of subcortical neural regions, visualization of the internal morphology of the brain in vivo can be achieved by MRI. Our lab, when possible, also uses MRIs on our post-surgical monkeys to get precise information on the exact placement of implanted microwires. Our stereotactic instrument and head-posts on the monkeys are compatible with a magnetic resonance unit and we have developed a model to analyze the magnetic resonance imaging results and calculate 3D mappings between external landmarks, skin tattoos on the primates’ heads and brain areas of interest. This allowed us to overcome the limitations, inaccuracies, and cost prohibitions of the traditional stereotactic methods and helped us make reliable localization of subcortical targets in the monkey brain.