An Interactive, Fully Digital Design Workflow for a Custom 3D Printed Facial Protection Orthosis (Face Mask)

Abstract

Sport-related injuries have an increased prevalence of maxillofacial fractures among professional (soccer) players. From professional players’ perspective, these injuries can have career-detrimental effects when followed with prolonged recovery periods. Therefore, to facilitate an earlier training and competition return, and reduce the chances of re-injury, the use of face-protective orthosis, commonly known as a face mask, in rehabilitative management is of paramount importance.To date, the fabrication of a customized face mask has been an entirely manual and time-consuming process. To mitigate the issues with conventional customized face masks, the authors have presented a fully digital “contactless design and production” workflow for the fabrication of a patient-specific face mask. This work aimed to integrate the existing tools of medical image processing software, computer-aided design (CAD), three-dimensional (3D) digitization, and additive manufacturing (AM) to provide a cost-effective, practitioner/patient-friendly solution for the design and manufacturing of patient-specific face-protective orthosis or face masks. Considering the functional and clinical aspects at the fractured site, a virtually designed face mask was fabricated in-house with carbon-reinforced polylactic acid composite material via material extrusion or Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology. The face mask had a comfortable fit, required no alterations, was lightweight, and shortened the convalescence period for the patient. The results from the selected design case accurately represent the clinical scenario and shows the potential of the proposed workflow in similar facial fracture situations. With greater ease of fabrication and production validity, this study highlights an alternative approach applicable in clinical practice.