Novel Augmented Reality System for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Recently, in the field of surgical visualization, augmented reality technology has shown incomparable advantages in oral and maxillofacial surgery. However, the current augmented reality methods need to develop personalized occlusal splints and perform secondary Computed Tomography (CT) scanning. These unnecessary preparations lead to high cost and extend the time of preoperative preparation. In this paper, we propose an augmented reality surgery guidance system based on 3D scanning. The system innovatively designs a universal occlusal splint for all patients and reconstructs the virtual model of patients with occlusal splints through 3D scanning. During the surgery, the pose relationship between the virtual model and the markers is computed through the marker on the occlusal splint. The proposed method can replace the wearing of occlusal splints for the secondary CT scanning during surgery. Experimental results show that the average target registration error of the proposed method is 1.38 ± 0.43 mm, which is comparable to the accuracy of the secondary CT scanning method. This result suggests the great application potential and value of the proposed method in oral and maxillofacial surgery.