Volume manipulation for simulating facial contouring surgery

In facial contouring surgery, surgeons operate the facial bone to correct bone morphology and thus achieve esthetic feminine face. To evaluate the face appearance after surgery and rehearse every surgical procedure in facial contouring surgery, simulations for tissue peeling, incising and suturing on the face together with bone burring and grafting on the facial bone are required. This paper presents a method that transforms respective tissue vertices to simulate tissue peeling. The transformation is based on specified incisions and clamps as in real facial contouring surgery. This paper also uses an auxiliary structure to represent and record tissue boundary changes inside the face. The elastic, partially plastic and plastic tissue deformation and wound formation during an incision can be simulated by manipulating these boundary changes. The incised wound recorded in the auxiliary structure is also manipulated to simulate tissue generation in wound healing during a suture. This volume manipulation method is combined with the reported method for bone burring and grafting simulations so that high-quality 3D images for illustrating surgical procedures both on the face and facial bone can be achieved. Simulations of two case examples including tissue peeling, incising and suturing procedures, and three modalities of facial contouring surgery demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and system.