1. A position monitoring system for surgical procedures comprising: a fiducial reference adapted to be fixed to the area of surgical patient; a marker attached to an implement in a predetermined orientation; a tracker able to determine the position and orientation of the one or more markers; at least one of said marker and said tracker being connected to the fiducial reference in a fixed relative position; a computer system having a scan of the patient with the fiducial reference fixed to the area of surgical patient, said computer system coupled to said tracker and including a processor with memory and a software program having a series of instructions when executed by the processor determines the relative position and orientation of the marker based on information from said tracker, and relates the current arrangement of the implement in relation to the scan data; and a display system in communication with the computer system, said display system adapted to show the current arrangement of implements and patient scan data during the procedure.