Deformable Modeling of the Cervical Spine for Neurosurgical Navigation Sascha Seifert, Oliver Burgert, R¨ udiger Dillmann Institut f¨ ur Rechnerentwurf und Fehlertoleranz, Universit¨ at Karlsruhe (TH), Germany Uwe Spetzger Neurochirurgische Klink St¨ adtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe, Germany April 1, 2005 Abstract Surgical intervention at the cervical spine is one of the most diffi- cult interventions in surgery. Special care must be taken to the sen- sitive anatomy e.g. around the arteries and spinal nerves. This arti- cle presents a novel approach in neurosurgical navigation which takes into account soft tissue structures in the cervical region by calculat- ing their deformation during the neurological intervention. Basis is a detailed nonlinear finite element model (FEM) of the cervical spine and a graphical deformation algorithm to generate adapted volumetric images of the surrounding soft tissue. 1