Precise and semi-automatic puncture trajectory planning in craniofacial surgery: A prototype study

Percutaneous surgeries in the craniofacial region bring benefits to patients. Small cut downs relieve pain and reduce bleeding. Preoperative puncture trajectory planning is a critical procedure for percutaneous surgeries. Methods have been proposed to help surgeons make good decisions in trajectory planning both in automatic and interactive ways. Even though, optimizing a puncture pathway in craniofacial region is still challenging. In this paper, we develop an automatic trajectory recommendation method for craniofacial surgeries based on quantitative criteria: insertion depth, the visible size of the target area, absolute visible size of the target (AVS), relative visible rate of the target (RVR), and vital distance (VD). We also introduce visual analysis methods such as scatter plots and parallel coordinates for refining automatic recommendation results. We integrate our methods into a preoperative surgery planning system and evaluate it on virtual patients.