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Custom implant design for large cranial defects
Filipe M M Marreiros1,2,3, Y Heuzé4, M Verius5
1Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Linköping University, 581 85, Linköping, Sweden. filipe.marreiros@liu.se.
Purpose:
The aim of this work was to introduce a computer-aided design (CAD) tool that enables the design of large skull defect (>100 [Formula: see text]) implants. Functional and aesthetically correct custom implants are extremely important for patients with large cranial defects. For these cases, preoperative fabrication of implants is recommended to avoid problems of donor site morbidity, sufficiency of donor material and quality. Finally, crafting the correct shape is a non-trivial task increasingly complicated by defect size.
Methods:
We present a CAD tool to design such implants for the neurocranium. A combination of geometric morphometrics and radial basis functions, namely thin-plate splines, allows semiautomatic implant generation. The method uses symmetry and the best fitting shape to estimate missing data directly within the radiologic volume data. In addition, this approach delivers correct implant fitting via a boundary fitting approach.
Results:
This method generates a smooth implant surface, free of sharp edges that follows the main contours of the boundary, enabling accurate implant placement in the defect site intraoperatively. The present approach is evaluated and compared to existing methods. A mean error of 89.29 % (72.64-100 %) missing landmarks with an error less or equal to 1 mm was obtained.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the results show that our CAD tool can generate patient-specific implants with high accuracy.
