Those who follow my work know that I develop an addon called
OrtogOnBlender, a learning tool for surgical planning.
I have had the honor of using it to teach many people and also develop surgical guides for the fields of
human and
veterinary health.
The fact is that these past few weeks, for the first time, I have been using this technology in my own body.
It all started when my dentist asked me to do a CT-scan of an injury that insisted on not completely healing.
Coincidentally, I was teaching a computer graphics course in my city, and my students included radiology and endodontic surgery specialists.
In commenting on my need, I was instructed to take the exam and took the opportunity to proceed with a broad approach. In addition to the tomography of the teeth, they also digitized them in 3D (intraoral digitization). I am very grateful to the staff of the
Santa Izabel Clinic, especially Dr. Carlos Augusto Abascal Shiguihara and Dr. Gabriela Zorron Cavalcanti, since I was extremely well attended there.
The first thing we did when we received the CT-scan was to isolate the lesion and reconstruct it in 3D using the
Slicer 3D semi-automatic segmentation option. It is evident that the work was followed from the beginning by the surgeon, Dr. Roosevelt Macedo of
Statto Clinic, also located in the city I currently live, Sinop-MT, more or less in central Brazil.
Once the lesion was isolated and positioned in a 3D space, I was then able to reconstruct the tomography directly by OrtogOnBlender and import the lesion (in red).
To improve the fit of the future surgical guide, I aligned the teeth from intraoral scanning with those of tomography.
Now we had the teeth, root and lesion very well positioned.
Using OrtogOnBlender's guide creation tools, we designed a structure that fit the teeth while maintaining a safe distance from the gums.
The purpose of the guide was to inform the surgeon of the exact projection of the lesion so that he could access it laterally when drilling the bone.
Here we have a bottom view of the model where we see the tentacular aspect of the guide.
We exported the model as STL and it was printed in high resolution 3D on the premises of Santa Izabel Clinic.
Fine print, but would the model fit properly?
I went to Dr. Roosevelt Macedo's clinic for a test and the model fit perfectly!
We arranged the day of surgery and prepared myself for it.
Snap test at surgery.
Lateral perforation. The image has been edited with grayscale and jagged to avoid shocking readers.
As expected the guide worked very well and allowed the surgeon to find and remove the injury.
I greatly thank the staff of Statto Clinic for the excellent treatment offered.
More than thank the doctors and health experts, I also thank my friend and project partner, Adriano Barreto, who organized the course that kicked off this event.
I hope this is the beginning of a history of using 3D technology more effectively and presently, not only in major cities, but also in more inland cities like mine. It is a great honor and joy to participate in all this, and of course, thanks to you who have read this far.
If OrtogOnBlender interests you, be sure to read the official documentation and download the system that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux:
A big hug!
