Interactive graphics for plastic surgery

Abstract

We have implemented a system for Computer-Aided Plastic Surgery. Planning plastic surgery procedures is complex because the surgeon needs to stretch and reshape the patient's skin to replace missing tissue while minimizing distortion of the surrounding tissue. Traditional planning techniques rely on the surgeon's experience to select among a myriad of possible procedure designs. While mathematica1 techniques for predicting the outcome of surgery have been proposed in the past, these are not in widespread use by surgeons because they require the surgeon to perform manual constructions and geometric calculations. Our system makes the analysis process easier by allowing the surgeon to draw the surgical plan directly on a 3D model of the patient. An automatic mesh generator is used to convert that drawing into a well-formulated problem for finite element analysis.