The quest for a means of accurate localisation of structures during neurosurgery has taxed the minds of clinicians from early in the history of the specialty, starting with Zernov’s encephalometer more than a century ago. Just as the solution to the mariners’ problem of determining longitude from which it partly takes its name, neuronavigation ("the surgeon’s sextant”) has relied on the advent of new technologies to provide solutions to an age old puzzle.

Advances In Neuronavigation begins by …