Three-dimensional visualization system as an aid for facial surgical planning

We present an aid for facial deformities treatement. We designed a system for surgical planning and prediction of human facial aspect after maxillo-facial surgery. We study the 3D reconstruction process of the tissues involved in the simulation, starting from CT acquisitions. 3D iso-surfaces meshes of soft tissues and bone structures are built. A sparse set of still photographs is used to reconstruct a 360 texture of the facial surface and increase its visual realism: Reconstructed objects are inserted into an object-oriented, portable and scriptable visualization software allowing the practitioner to manipulate and visualize them interactively. Several LODs (Level-Of-Details) techniques are used to ensure usability. Bone structures are separated and moved by means of cut planes matching orthognatic surgery procedures. We simulate soft tissue deformations by creating a physically-based springs model between both tissues. The new static state of the facial model is computed by minimising the energy of the springs system to achieve equilibrium. This process is optimized by transferring informations like participation hints at vertex-level between a warped generic model and the facial mesh.