A novel haptic model and environment for maxillofacial surgical operation planning and manipulation

This paper presents a practical method and a new haptic model to support manipulations of bones and their segments during the planning of a surgical operation in a virtual environment using a haptic interface. To perform an effective dental surgery it is important to have all the operation related information of the patient available beforehand in order to plan the operation and avoid any complications. A haptic interface with a virtual and accurate patient model to support the planning of bone cuts is therefore critical, useful and necessary for the surgeons. The system proposed uses DICOM images taken from a digital tomography scanner and creates a mesh model of the filtered skull, from which the jaw bone can be isolated for further use. A novel solution for cutting the bones has been developed and it uses the haptic tool to determine and define the bone-cutting plane in the bone, and this new approach creates three new meshes of the original model. Using this approach the computational power is optimized and a real time feedback can be achieved during all bone manipulations. During the movement of the mesh cutting, a novel friction profile is predefined in the haptical system to simulate the force feedback feel of different densities in the bone.