An integrated haptic-enabled virtual reality system for orthognathic surgery planning

Abstract

Conventional Orthognathic surgery (OGS) planning involves cephalometric analyses and dental casts to be mounted on an articulator. Dental segments are subsequently identified, cut and repositioned to allow the fabrication of intraoral wafers that guide the positioning of the osteotomy bone segments. This conventional planning introduces many inaccuracies that affect the post-surgery outcomes. Although computer technologies have advanced computational tools for OGS planning, they have failed in providing a practical solution. Many focuses only on some specific stages of the planning process, and their ability to transfer preoperative planning data to the operating room is limited. This paper proposes a new integrated haptic-enabled virtual reality (VR) system for OGS planning. The system incorporates CAD tools and haptics to facilitate a complete planning process and is able to automatically generate preoperative plans. A clinical pre-diagnosis is also provided automatically by the system based on the patient’s digital data. A functional evaluation based on a real patient case study demonstrates that the proposed virtual OGS planning method is feasible and more effective than the traditional approach at increasing the intuitiveness and reducing errors and planning times.

Keywords:

• Orthognathic surgery (OGS)
• virtual reality (VR)
• haptic technologies
• computer-aided surgery
• surgery planning

Acknowledgments

The first author would like to thank CONACYT for the scholarship provided during his PhD studies. Acknowledgments are also given to the PRODEP and FAI programs from SEP and UASLP, respectively, for the supplementary financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by CONACYT (National Science and Technology Council of Mexico), research grant CB-2010-01-154430.