Abstract:

BACKGROUND: In recent years, a large number of biomechanical experiments have conducted to attempt to explain the correlation of craniocerebral injury with stress size and injury site. However, studies on skull fracture cause mainly focus on direct violence, and very little is known about the stress distributions in the skull exposed to indirect violence.
OBJECTIVE: Using spiral CT data, three-dimensional reconstruction software, and finite element analysis software, to establish a three-dimensional finite element model of the skull in the ordinary PC.
METHODS: Normal adult women were selected, free of head or neck injury, surgery or other history of disease. X-ray routine examination was performed to exclude organic disease, followed by head spiral CT TLC scanning. Image data were input into medical image and 3D reconstruction software MIMICS to establish the three-dimensional visualized model of the skull. The simplified model was optimized and introduced to finite element analysis software ANSYS 10.0 to establish three-dimensional finite element model of the skull.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The entity model of the skull base was composed of frontal bone, sphenoid, ethmoid, temporal bone and occipital bone. Since the adults’ sutures are closed, the skull is viewed as a whole. The entity model was meshed to create a 3D finite element model which consisted of 51 053 units and 80 273 nodes. The established finite element model of the skull base is verisimilar geometrically, which can be used in the biomechanic research.