Computer-aided porous implant design for cranio-maxillofacial defect restoration.

The porous structure of the implant contributes significantly to prosthetic osseointegration in cranio-maxillofacial defect repair surgeries. This study establishes a system called EasyImplant that can easily and efficiently design customized cranio-maxillofacial implant with porous structure. Healthy side of the skull model is used to obtain the initial implant model on defective side by mirroring method. According to the curvature of undamaged surface, the initial model can be adjusted and repaired. Based on the initial implant model, porous implant structure can be generated efficiently using create sample points, distance Field and marching Cube algorithms. Finally, the connection plate is obtained through surface extruding and model merging. With EasyImplant, a complete porous implant model can be designed in a short time. The proposed methods can contribute to shorten the period of facial implant designing and reduce the incidence of surgical infection.