Russell A. Brown

Russell A. Brown, an American physician and computer scientist, is the inventor^[1] of the N-localizer^[2] technology that enables guidance of stereotactic surgery or radiosurgery using medical images that are obtained via computed tomography (CT),^[3] magnetic resonance imaging (MRI),^[4] or positron emission tomography (PET).^[5]

Russell A. Brown in 2007

Brown invented the N-localizer in 1978 when he was a medical student^[6] investigating image-guided surgery in the laboratory of his mentor, James A. Nelson, at the University of Utah. A few months later, Brown designed and built the first CT-compatible stereotactic frame in order to test the concept of the N-localizer.^[7]

Brown also made contributions to the k-d tree^[8] and to the generalized Born model^[9] of implicit solvation.