Archives of otolaryngology--head & neck surgery
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Arch. Otolaryngol. Head Neck Surg. · Feb 2011
Navigated surgery at the lateral skull base and registration and preoperative imagery: experimental results.
To assess factors that affect the accuracy of navigated surgery at the human lateral skull base, including the choice of registration procedures and preoperative computed tomography (CT) section thickness, and to compare target registration error, a measure of clinical application accuracy, with root mean square, an accuracy variable provided by several surgical navigation systems. ⋯ High-resolution CT images, 0.5 mm, of the petrous bone and a pair-point registration using loci on the patient and registration superstructures worked best under experimental conditions. Only target registration error was found to provide reliable information on accuracy intraoperatively. In line with the literature, these data prove that root mean square bears little relevance for clinical application accuracy.