Computer-aided implant design for the restoration of cranial defects

Sci Rep. 2017 Jun 23;7(1):4199. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-04454-6.

Abstract

Patient-specific cranial implants are important and necessary in the surgery of cranial defect restoration. However, traditional methods of manual design of cranial implants are complicated and time-consuming. Our purpose is to develop a novel software named EasyCrania to design the cranial implants conveniently and efficiently. The process can be divided into five steps, which are mirroring model, clipping surface, surface fitting, the generation of the initial implant and the generation of the final implant. The main concept of our method is to use the geometry information of the mirrored model as the base to generate the final implant. The comparative studies demonstrated that the EasyCrania can improve the efficiency of cranial implant design significantly. And, the intra- and inter-rater reliability of the software were stable, which were 87.07 ± 1.6% and 87.73 ± 1.4% respectively.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computer-Aided Design*
  • Humans
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional
  • Plastic Surgery Procedures*
  • Prostheses and Implants*
  • Prosthesis Design*
  • Skull / abnormalities*
  • Skull / diagnostic imaging
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed