A Simple Interactive Tool for the CAD Modelling of Surgical Guides for Autologous Ear Reconstruction

Abstract

The advent and consolidation of Reverse Engineering (RE) and Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques in the medical field has significantly revolutionized the surgical approach, pushing towards a new perspective of treatment based on the respect of interindividual anatomical variability [3]. These technologies have also been exploited in the surgical treatment of microtia, a congenital malformation characterized by partial or complete lack of the external ear architecture. [5]. Such a surgical procedure involves the removal of a portion of the patient's costal cartilage, the manual modeling of the cartilage tissue in order to obtain a geometry that resembles the healthy auricular anatomy and the insertion of the cartilage framework thus obtained in a subcutaneous pocket in the malformed area [2].