Automatic hole repairing for cranioplasty using Bézier surface approximation

Abstract

Cranioplasty is the procedure that repairs holes or defects in the skull with cranial implants. When the bone from the hole is missing, damaged, or infected, the defect needs to be covered with an artificial plate to protect the brain. In this study, a hole-repairing algorithm is developed to aid shaping artificial plates for cranioplasty by describing a method for filling holes in defective biomodels with unstructured triangular surface meshes or in stereolithography format. The resulting patching meshes interpolate the shape and density of the surrounding mesh. The steps in repairing a hole include hole identification, hole triangulations using genetic algorithm (GA) optimization, and a customized advancing-front meshing technique using surface approximations based on a Quartic Bézier Gregory patch.