Robotic Bending of Craniomaxillofacial Fixation Plates

摘要

While personalized, 3D printed, craniomaxillofacial (CMF) fixation plates are available from several vendors, given the short time window for reconstructive surgery in either advanced stage cancer resection or trauma, fixation plates are most often manually bent by eye. A surgeon’s manual bending of fixation plates may significantly delay these time-sensitive procedures as well as introduce work hardening damage to the plate due to repetitive bending at one or more locations. Unfortunately, revision surgery can follow work hardening-induced fatigue failure, stress-shielding-induced bone loss, or stress concentration-induced fixation device failure. Our group has developed a desktop automated fixation plate bending unit for the robotic bending of CMF fixation plates. Our automated plate bending device consists of a pair of modular jaws that precisely hold a fixation plate and iteratively bend/twist it based on geometric data imported from a plate bending plan developed using 3D patient data and a VSP (Virtual Surgical Planning) environment. Our prototype plate bender offers accurate plate bending in a time frame that is much reduced versus traditional manual plate bending. The design details, and performance of this device are documented in this study.