A Biomechanical Model for Soft Tissue Simulation in Craniofacial Surgery

Soft tissue prediction is an important additional criterion in surgical planning. Especially in craniofacial surgery the realistic prediction of a patient’s postoperative appearance is of utmost importance. A physically based modeling approach seems to be most suitable for the achievement of realistic results. Howevei; the properties of biological structures are highly complex and scarcely investigated, thus simplified models are o fen applied. In this paper we describe our FE based modeling approach for static soft tissue prediction and muscle muscle simulation. In addition to static soft tissue prediction, the estimation of a patient’s facial mimic is another important criterion for the prediction of postoperative results, as well as for enhanced patient compliance. An important prerequisite for the simulation of facial mimic is the realistic modeling of contracting muscles and their interaction with surrounding soft tissue. Since the information on microscopic structures such as muscle fibers can not be obtained from tomographic data, that are usually used for the reconstruction of a patient’s anatomy, a heuristic construction considering the natural relationship between the shape of muscles and their biomechanical functionality has to be applied. 2. Material and Methods