Interactive Cutting of the Skull for Craniofacial Surgical Planning

G. Pintilie and T. McInerney (Canada)

Keywords

Modeling, Simulation and Computing, Computer-Aided Surgical Planning, Interactive Cutting and Positioning with Haptic Feedback, Triangular Mesh

Abstract

We present a prototype surgical planning system that simulates cutting and positioning operations on rigid objects such as the human skull, with realistic haptic and visual feedback. Our positioning interface allows users to grab and manipulate objects while sensing the interaction forces between the object being manipulated and other objects in the environment. The cutting interfaces support planar and contour cuts. We present two algorithms that create both types of cuts through rigid objects that are represented by closed triangular meshes. Both algorithms create cuts with predictable accuracies independent of the meshes they operate on, and avoid the introduction of degenerate mesh elements. For contour cuts, the cut region may be closed or open, and whenever possible it is separated from the original object. To deal with discontinuities in the surface meshes of solid objects introduced by such operations, we have implemented an appropriate surface-reconstruction algorithm.

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