A physically based model to simulate maxillo-facial surgery from 3D CT images

Computer-based surgery simulation represents a rapidly emerging and increasingly important area of research that combines a number of disciplines for the common purpose of improving health care. Generally, the goal of computer-based surgery simulation is to enable a surgeon to experiment with different surgical procedures in an artificial environment. This paper describes an approach for elastic modelling of human tissue based on the use of embedded boundary condition techniques. Embedded boundary condition models allow to simulate the cranio-facial surgery directly on the grid of the 3D CT image of the patient. Previously simulated operations have been performed using surface models or by using a low detailed model of the tissue volume. The approach proposed here involves complete 3D modelling of the solid highly detailed structure of the object, starting from the information present in the 3D diagnostic images. Due to the huge amount of data and the computational complexity of the problem, a parallel version of the software has been implemented on the supercomputer CRAY T3E. The application of this approach for modelling the elastic deformation of human tissue in response to movement of bones is demonstrated both on the visible human data set of the National Library of Medicine and on the CT data set of real patients. c ©1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.