Simulation of postoperative 3D facial morphology using physics-based head model

We propose a 3D head modeling method and a prototype of the facial surgery simulation system for surgical prediction using a physics-based head model. The arbitrary head model is reconstructed to match the target head shape by the use of anatomical measurement points plotted on the two directional X-ray images from both of frontal and side views. The accurate 3D coordinates of their points are obtained using 3D Cephalogram Measurement. For the detailed fitting of the face, the feature points automatically detected from a frontal facial image are utilized to match the facial parts such as eyes, a nose, and a mouth. These measurement points are emplogal as the control points in the model fitting process, and the other points are deformed by the smooth interpolation based on their positions relative to the control points. In this paper, we focus on the facial surgery simulation, Orthodontic surgery. In the experiment, we predicted the facial shape after surgery for patients with mandibular prognathism. We also simulate facial dynamics before and after surgery, which is derived from both of muscular and skeletal systems. By comparing simulation results with the actual facial images after surgery, proposed method can be proved to be practically useful.