Monday, December 22, 2025 12/22/2025

Ultrasound based neurosurgical navigation with uncertainty visualization

Award Number: R01EB032387
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE Of BIOMEDICAL IMAGING & BIOENGINEERING
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 06/02/2022
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 02/28/2027

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Ultrasound based neurosurgical navigation with uncertainty visualization - Surgical resection is the initial treatment for nearly all brain tumors and the extent of resection is strongly correlated with prognosis. However, because brain tumors, especially gliomas, are intimately involved in surrounding functioning brain tissue, aggressive resection must be balanced against the risk of causing new neurological deficits. Modern advances in anatomical and functional imaging and the widespread adoption of neuro-navigation now help neurosurgeons to plan and execute an optimal surgical approach. Unfortunately, changes in the shape of the brain during surgery, known as brain shift, invalidate the assumption of all commercial neuro-navigation systems that preoperative data can be mapped to patient coordinates using rigid registration. Because brain shift progresses during surgery, the rigid registration of neuro- navigation systems is least accurate at the critical final stages of resection when the marginal tissue is being removed. There has been more than 20 years of research invested in measuring, modeling and compensating for brain shift with the goal of providing neuro-navigation systems with an accurate nonrigid registration from preoperative image data to the patient’s brain in the presence of brain shift. While results are promising, they are not yet accurate enough to be incorporated into commercial systems. Nonrigid registration is subject to both measurement and modeling uncertainty that varies throughout 3D space. Most nonrigid registration methods do not attempt to quantify this uncertainty and, to our knowledge, there have been no attempts to present this uncertainty to the surgeon. We believe that it is important to make surgeons aware of this uncertainty so that they can make informed decisions, particularly in locations where uncertainty is high. In this project, we plan to investigate nonrigid registration algorithms that model registration uncertainty explicitly, semi-automatic and fully-automatic nonrigid registration methods that utilize registration uncertainty to iteratively guide registration improvements, and visualization paradigms for effective presentation of registration uncertainty to surgeons in the surgical environment. We hypothesize that effective representation and visualization of registration uncertainty for brain shift correction in neuro-navigation will 1) lead to iterative semi-automatic and fully-automatic nonrigid registration methods that improve registration accuracy and 2) allow neurosurgeons to make more informed decisions during tumor resections that will lead to increased clinical impact of image-guided neurosurgery. We will carry out the following Aims: 1. Develop novel feature- based image registration algorithms that represent uncertainty explicitly; 2. Use registration uncertainty maps to guide semi- and fully-automatic nonrigid registration; 3. Evaluate the utility of nonrigid registration with uncertainty visualization in a clinical setting.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2026	2025	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	000	4	12/17/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $510,907 )
2025	2025	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	001	4	6/24/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$51,090
2025	2025	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	000	4	3/25/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$459,817
														Subtotal = $510,907

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $500,689 )
2024	2024	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	000	3	5/9/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$500,689
														Subtotal = $500,689

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $510,907 )
2023	2023	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	000	2	3/1/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$510,907
														Subtotal = $510,907

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $510,907 )
2022	2022	BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, INC., THE	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	001	1	6/27/2022	NEW	$0
2022	2022	BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, INC., THE	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health	000	1	6/2/2022	NEW	$510,907
														Subtotal = $510,907

Grand Total All Awards = $2,033,410

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Ultrasound based neurosurgical navigation with uncertainty visualization

Award Number: R01EB032387

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE Of BIOMEDICAL IMAGING & BIOENGINEERING

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 06/02/2022

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 02/28/2027

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