Anisotropic finite element modeling for patient-specific mandible

Area of Science:

• Biomechanical Engineering
• Medical Imaging
• Computational Anatomy

Background:

• Accurate patient-specific finite element (FE) models are crucial for understanding mandible biomechanics.
• Existing methods often struggle to fully capture the mandible's complex geometry and anisotropic material properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a quasi-automatic software tool for generating patient-specific 3D FE models of the human mandible.
• To integrate complex individual geometry and anisotropic material laws into these models.

Main Methods:

• Utilized computed tomography (CT) data to reconstruct individual mandible geometry, distinguishing cortical and cancellous bone.
• Employed B-spline curves along mandible borders as baselines for adaptive surface interpolation and geometry segmentation.
• Constructed structured FE volume meshes and anisotropic material trajectory vector fields (orthotropic for cortical, transversely isotropic for cancellous bone).

Main Results:

• Successfully reproduced individual mandible geometry and bone tissue differentiation from CT data.
• Generated well-structured FE meshes and anisotropic material vector fields guided by B-spline surfaces.
• Sensitivity analysis indicated the significant impact of elastic anisotropy on mandibular load-bearing behavior.

Conclusions:

• The developed software tool enables quasi-automatic generation of patient-specific 3D FE mandible models.
• Accurate representation of anisotropic material properties is essential for realistic biomechanical simulations of the mandible.