3-D simulation of craniofacial surgical procedures.

An integrated system for simulating craniofacial surgical procedures is presented. The system computes nonlinear soft-tissue deformation due to bone realignment. It is capable of simulating bone cutting and bone realignment with integrated interactive collision detection. Furthermore, soft-tissue deformation and cutting due to surgical instruments can be visualized. The system has been tested with several individual patient data sets. Simulation processes are based on a 3-D model of a patient's preoperative bone structure of the skull derived from a computer tomography scan and on a 3-D, photorealistic model of the patient's preoperative appearance obtained by a laser range scanner. The multi-layer soft-tissue model is represented by nonlinear springs. Very fast and robust prediction of nonlinear soft-tissue deformation is computed by optimizing a nonlinear cost function.