Percentage of mesh reduction appropriate for designing digital obturator prostheses on personal computers

Abstract

Statement of problem: Computer-aided design (CAD) of maxillofacial prostheses is a hardware-intensive process. The greater the mesh detail is, the more processing power is required from the computer. A reduction in mesh quality has been shown to reduce workload on computers, yet no reference value of reduction is present for intraoral prostheses that can be applied during the design. Purpose: The purpose of this simulation study was to establish a reference percentage value that can be used to effectively reduce the size and polygons of the 3D mesh without drastically affecting the dimensions of the prosthesis itself. Material and methods: Fifteen different maxillary palatal defects were simulated on a dental cast and scanned to create 3D casts. Digital bulbs were fabricated from the casts. Conventional bulbs for the defects were fabricated, scanned, and compared with the digital bulb to serve as a control. The polygon parameters of digital bulbs were then reduced by different percentages (75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, and 1% of the original mesh) which created a total of 105 meshes across 7 mesh groups. The reduced mesh files were compared individually with the original design in an open-source point cloud comparison software program. The parameters of comparison used in this study were Hausdorff distance (HD), Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), and volume. Results: The reduction in file size was directly proportional to the amount of mesh reduction. There were minute yet insignificant differences in volume (P>.05) across all mesh groups, with significant differences (P