What if you cannot see the target? Two case studies of atlas-to-patient registration in trigeminal neuralgia radiosurgery.

Abstract

Introduction: Medically resistant trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a well-suited pathology to be treated by radiosurgery (RS). A significant percentage (60%-70%) of patients is expected to benefit from the RS treatment. Imaging is crucial to identify the target, though unfortunately in some cases the trigeminal nerve could not be visible even in high field magnetic resonance images (MRI). The aim of this work is to develop and relatively validate a method for the atlasbased identification of the target in those cases where the trigeminal nerve is not visible.