clipped from: www.nsf.gov   
In clinical trials, Chrisochoides says his team can render a new model in six or seven minutes, but hopes to be able to do so in under two minutes.
Chrisochoides' lab is dominated by a projection computer monitor whose screen would not look out of place in a small multiplex theater. Chrisochoides handed out 3-D glasses to a small audience

Dynamic 3-D computer modeling tracks brain changes during surgery

Photo of 2 people and a 3-D tessellated image of a brain projected on a large monitor.

Your brain, and the tumor inside it, no longer fully float in their protective bath of cerebrospinal fluid. Gravity comes into play, as does the atmospheric pressure of the operating theater. The brain responds to these foreign forces, the cerebral tissue sagging, rebounding and changing shape. The tumor that the neurosurgeons want to remove also has changed position.

Chrisochoides is the leader of a group that is working with a team at Harvard Medical School to use mathematics and computer power to solve the neurosurgeon's problem of space and time.