I. What is a surgical navigation system? The surgical navigation system is a 3D visualized “virtual human brain” displayed on the computer based on medical images such as MRI and CT. Where the probe in the doctor’s hand points, it is clear whether the edge of the tumor has been reached and whether the target location of the probe is an important tissue. In this way, the patient’s preoperative or intraoperative image data can be accurately corresponded to the patient’s anatomy during surgery, and at the same time, the surgical instruments are constantly tracked during surgery and their positions are updated in the form of virtual probes on the patient’s image in real time, so that the surgeon can know at a glance the position of the surgical instruments relative to the patient’s anatomy. This results in faster, more precise and safer surgical procedures. Surgical assistance based on this 3D positional information greatly reduces surgical trauma and minimizes pain for the surgical patient, which in turn has led to the rapid development of minimally invasive surgery as well. At the same time, as the system can greatly improve the surgeon’s surgical accuracy, it can provide better medical services to patients. What is the use of surgical navigation system? There are 2 main functions of surgical navigation system: 1. Pre-operative simulated surgery By designing the surgical approach and simulating the surgery in the computer before surgery, the clinician can have a clear idea of what to do and reduce the mistakes during the surgery. Take glioma resection surgery as an example, the traditional craniotomy method is to determine the exact location of the tumor based on MRI, CT and other imaging data before surgery, so as to develop a surgical plan. To ensure accuracy, the surgical incision is often large and mostly relies on the surgeon’s personal experience. However, with the precise positioning of the neuronavigation, the lesion and normal brain structures are shown on the computer screen one by one. In this way, the scalpel, guided by the probe, can safely approach the tumor step by step to ensure foolproofness. Clinical trials have shown that with the adoption of navigation technology, the positioning accuracy of surgery can be changed from centimeter level to millimeter level, and the average value of navigation accuracy is less than 2 mm. 2.Provide real-time data for doctors intraoperatively The system clearly specifies the important structures such as nucleus pulposus, blood vessels and the distance to large blood vessels that the surgical path passes through intraoperatively in neurosurgery, and provides the relationship between the location of the patient’s intraoperative lesion and normal tissues in real time, etc.