Acknowledgments

I would like to thank:

• Bruce Davey for his work on the modification of the Viewing Wand allowing the data acquisition in the experiment on the accuracy of the FARO surgical arm, for his assistance during the data acquisition and for helpful discussions,
• Robert Rohling from the Biorobotics Lab of McGill University for his contribution to the experiment involving the OPTOTRAK and for providing figures in Chapter 4,
• Rick Hoge for the acquisition of three-point Dixon data,
• Louis Collins, Bruce Pike and Atsushi Takahashi for helpful suggestions and for their patience in answering my questions,
• The Neurosurgeons of the Montreal Neurological Institute, A. Oliver, D. Lacerte, J. Bizzi and M. Munz for their collaboration in operating room,
• Samuel Song, for providing his phase unwrapping program necessary for the computation of field maps,
• The people of the Neuro-Imaging Lab who never hesitated to spend time providing me with their help and
• Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for financial support.

Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Terry M. Peters, for his support and encouragement, and for the time he spent to read the manuscript of this thesis and suggest ways to improve it.