Operation Planning in Craniomaxillofacial Surgery

Abstract

Surgery in the craniomaxillofacial area is complex. Planning a surgical operation can help the surgeon enhance the quality of the operation. On the other hand, the benefit of a planning phase cannot be realized if the planning strategy cannot be replicated during surgery. A complete surgical system would support planning, simulation, execution by a surgeon, execution guided by a navigation system, and autonomous execution by a robot. In this paper we present our approach for an integrated system for planning and execution of craniomaxillofacial surgery. This approach is based on a hierarchical architecture and the decomposition of planning levels being either independent or dependent on the execution system via implicit and explicit elementary operations. The architecture of our system can be applied to other surgical interventions in general. The system has been employed in two operations in the mandible/maxilla region, the LeFort I osteotomy and sagittal dissection of the mandible. Results of simulated and robotized execution of some elementary operations are presented.