Biomodelling of cranio-maxillofacial implant applying open source software

Abstract

Advances in craniofacial medical imaging has allowed the 3D reconstruction of anatomical structures for medical applications, including the design of patient specific implants based on computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) platforms. This technology has provided new possibilities to visualize complex medical data through generation of 3–dimensional (3D) physical models via additive manufacturing that can be eventually utilised to assist in diagnosis, surgical planning, implant design, and patient management. Although the study on the construction of cranio-maxillofacial implant based on computer modelling and advanced biomaterial are growing rapidly from other parts of the world, however, in Malaysia is scanty, especially with open source application. For this reason, it leads us to embark in a study to produce a potential locally cranio-maxillofacial implant with equivalent standard as compared to the commercially available product applying open source software. As part of four sub-projects of USM Research University Team (RUT) project, the authors had investigated and applied open source software to perform image processing of CT data, to segment the region of interest of anatomical structures, to create virtual 3D models, and finally to convert the virtual 3D models to a format that compatible for additive manufacturing platform. Further research is ongoing to investigate on designing the cranio-maxillofacial implant using open source CAD software using suitable biomaterial.