Preface: intuitive visualization of medical information

Information technology(IT), visualization, and manipulation will be the key words for next generation surgery. In other words, it is awaited to make good use of intuitive visualization of medical information management by extensive use of IT in which medical science and engineering are merged and incorporated and of the process management or the visualization of treatment course using three-dimensional intraoperative images and simulation data base. In order to put it into practice, it is inevitable to establish a treatment strategy system that certainly enables surgeons to provide constantly high quality medicine. This means that to achieve the goal while optimizing the strategy toward the goal(a road map) by monitoring real-timely the pre- and intraoperative surgical planning and the operating condition of surgical devices under the control of the surgical strategy system.