Actual technical improvements, future aspects

The morphological estimation of complex anatomic body regions and of congenital or acquired defects is of great importance for an individualized surgical planning, the operative quality management and for long-term postoperative outcome control [11]. Especially congenital thoracic wall deformities frequently show substantial anterior thoracic wall affections, but only few and often deficient analyzing methods exist to objectively assess the complex three-dimensional (3-D) contour anomalies [19]. In particular, women show associated malformations of the breast soft tissue, which aggravates the 3-D evaluation of the female breast region.