An innovative mixed reality approach for maxillofacial osteotomies and repositioning

Craniomaxillofacial surgeries are performed using custom-made physical cutting guides and resin dental splints that present several drawbacks (e.g. time and cost required for their design and production). The literature commonly provides augmented/mixed reality (AR/MR) solutions for assisting maxillofacial osteotomies and repositioning without any interactive guide. This work proposes a new MR application, useful for osteotomy and repositioning, providing interactive, fast, and intuitive feedback to the surgeon, who is then supported in performing the bone fragment resection and replacement frame by frame. The proposed application speeds up the surgery and reduces under/overshooting errors. Moreover, the idea of integrating osteotomy and repositioning assistance in the same MR application is rarely found in the literature. It is an entirely novel approach to craniomaxillofacial surgery. The MR application has been designed with a three-button menu. The “App Start” calibrates the app, the “Osteotomy Mode” visualises the holograms of the cutting lines and drilling points, and the “Repositioning Mode” visualises the step-by-step real-time feedback to precisely support the surgeon placing the osteotomised bone fragment towards the final pre-planned position. The MR app has been developed in Unity and deployed on Microsoft HoloLens V2. A laboratory test bench was realised to validate the accuracy of the proposed MR-based approach. The validation protocol consists of two tasks to test the osteotomy and repositioning modes using a 3D-printed skull phantom. For osteotomy, the accuracy is 0.89 mm (genioplasty), 1.24 mm (maxillary osteotomy), 1.33 mm (orthognathic surgery), and 2.89 mm (mandibular angle osteotomy). For repositioning, the accuracy is 0.6 mm (anteroposterior deviation), 0.7 mm (mediolateral deviation), and 0.6° (angular deviation).