Background
Tissue-based pathological diagnosis is the criterion standard in the diagnosis of brain tumors. In situations in which surgical resection is not necessarily indicated but diagnosis of a brain lesion is needed to determine optimal treatment, a stereotactic brain biopsy offers a relatively safe and reliable method of obtaining diagnostic tissue. For over half a century, frame-based stereotactic methods have proven their use, and, more recently, frameless stereotaxy has emerged as a valuable alternative to this. Both framed and frameless stereotactic biopsy are discussed in this topic.