A system is disclosed for determining a position and a change in the
position of an anatomical structure. The system utilizes a surgical
navigation system and a substrate that is capable of being removably
mounted to an outer surface of a patient's body. The substrate includes a
sensor that is tracked by the surgical navigation system and a positional
device that determines the position of an anatomical structure relative
to the sensor. The concatenation of the position of the sensor and the
relative position of the anatomical structure allows a global position of
the anatomical structure to be determined by a computer system and
displayed to the user.