Table 1.
Summary of results according to the trauma database due to facial injuries caused by ski accidents in Innsbruck (Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Innsbruck, Austria).
Fig 1.
The three figures show commonly available miniplates for bone fracture fixation.
All models are of the MedArtis Trauma 2.0 series. The most left one, with article number M-4138, shows an overall length of 23 mm consisting of two end ring elements and two middle ring elements. The model in the middle, with article number M-4320, with the same properties as the left one but an extended bar of 9 mm and thus extended to 29 mm in the overall length. Last, the most right one, with article number M-4322, with two additional ring elements and an overall length of 35 mm.
Fig 2.
a,b,c: Clinically used osteosynthesis of the left mandibular angle using two plate techniques.
X1, x2 plate position, N: Inferior alveolar nerve in the mandibular bone. Note: The nerve does not interfere with the bone plates to avoid nerve damaging and loss of lip sensibility.
Fig 3.
Image of real patient x-ray data suffering from a mandibular angle fracture (left angle).
Left image shows the untreated defect. The result of the treatment with applied miniplates after bone repositioning is shown on the right part of the figure.
Fig 4.
Constructed network using the MeVisLab prototyping environment, including self-implemented modules named CurvatureCalc for baseline calculation and ImplantGen for generating the implant models.
Fig 5.
User interface, separated in controls and viewer panels.
The Viewer box shows the data set (white skull) attached with a miniplate (gold) and the baseline (green).
Fig 6.
Flow chart of a miniplate generation process separated in three main parts: Orange marks the data acquisition, grey the implant set-up including the baseline calculation and apricot the implant generation and visualization.
Fig 7.
Illustration of the baseline determination.
The direction vector D (green) is set up parallel to the initial point's (red star) direction vector (green). The direction vector is perpendicular to the initial point's normal vector (purple). The origins of the cast rays (brown) are translated along the direction vector and checked for intersections.
Fig 8.
The patient's skull (white) with an applied baseline (green) are shown on the left side, where the normal vector N and the direction vector D are drawn for the placement of the ring elements.
The ring element itself is shown in the right image, where the normal vector N and direction vector D (red), which have to be aligned with the vectors from the baseline, are illustrated.
Fig 9.
Bridge building principle with triangulation.
Green crosses mark the corner of the ring element's plane side. To each baseline point (green points) a rectangle (light blue lines) is constructed. Rectangle triangulation, spanned by the two starting nodes (N1 and N2) and two opposing nodes of the previous constructed rectangle (N3 and N4). Node N1, N3 and N4 build a triangle T2, and Nodes N1, N2 and N3 build the second triangle T1.
Fig 10.
Result of the questionnaire derived from Table 2.
The x-axis represents the questions and the time. The y-axis shows the rating score of each question together with the superimposed standard error.
Table 2.
Results from the evaluation questionnaire for each subject using a six point Likert rating.
Median is the median value of the four subjects and Error describes the superimposed standard error. Q11 is a yes/no question where no equals a value of zero and yes equals a value of 6. The time T is measured in minutes.
Fig 11.
Baseline (green) on more complex surfaces.
On the left image a wave like surface is shown, and on the right side the baseline adjusts to a ninety degree angle.
Fig 12.
Example result containing all three available implants each located at a position where they generally are applied (left). For better illustration, the single implants are extended portrayed as well on the right side. The plate could easily be positioned according to the underlying bone contours by the used software module.
Fig 13.
Result from Fig 12 in its sagittal (left) and coronal (right) perspectives.