👋 Project Overview

Cranioplasty is the surgical process where a skull defect, caused by a brain tumor surgery or trauma, is repaired using a cranial implant, which must fit precisely against the borders of the skull defect as replacement to the removed cranial bone. The design of the cranial implant is a challenging task and involves several steps: (1) obtaining the 3D imaging data of the skull with the defect from CT or MRI, (2) converting the 3D imaging data into a 3D mesh model and, (3) creating an implant as 3D mesh model for 3D printing. The last step usually requires expensive commercial software, which clinical institutions often have limited access to. A video shows an example of interactive cranial implant design using Geomagic Sculpt. Researchers have been working with common CAD software as an alternative to the commercial software for the design of cranial implants whereas these approaches still involve intensive human interaction, which is time-consuming and requires expertise in the specific medical domain (see also a video for an example of cranial implant design performed using MeVisLab). Therefore, a fast and automatic design of cranial implants is highly desired, which would also enable in-operation room (in-OR) manufacturing of the implants for the patient when additive manufacturing (AM) is combined.