Study on Application of Rapid Prototyping in Precise Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Conventional methods for diagnosis and operation planning based on 2D image are still widely used in oral and maxillofacial prostheses surgery, and the accuracy and efficiency are needed to improve eagerly. Aiming at this problem, rapid prototyping (RP), a technique of advanced manufacturing, is applied to fabricate the physical model of bone, and which is used to simulate the operation further. The procedure of RP based precise surgery is presented, and some key techniques including CT image processing, 3D bone model reconstruction, repairing model design, physical model fabrication, pre-operation simulation are discussed in detail. Total 25 successful clinical applications illustrate that, with RP based precise surgery methodology, the efficiency and quality of oral and maxillofacial prostheses can be improved effectively.