Computer-assisted surgery: Principles

Abstract

Computer-assisted surgery has emerged as an important adjunct in total knee arthroplasty and will improve the precision of mechanical alignment and ligament balancing of most surgical techniques. Current methods utilize computed tomography, imageless methods, or fluoro-scopic referencing for image acquisition. Evolving minimally invasive surgical approaches will benefit from the virtual imaging of computer-assisted navigation. © 2005 Springer Medizin Verlag Heidelberg.