Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Three-dimensional measuring technique is widely used in reverse engineering, quality inspection, virtual reality and other fields, and gradually enters into the medical field at the same time. The data meet clinical requirement and provide accurate simulation about surgery through choosing safe, accurate, rapid and high cost-effective measuring method.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the clinical application of laser scanning and three-dimensional character acquisition and to analyze the main technologies of application.
METHODS: Literatures about three-dimensional character acquisition using laser scanning and clinical application were searched from Chinese Journal Full-text database, WanFang database and Sciencedirect Database by the first author. These literatures have been published from 2000 to 2009 were selected. The key terms were “laser scanning, three-dimensional reconstruction and clinical application” both in English and Chinese, respectively.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Three-dimensional character acquisition using laser scanning was fully capable to meet clinical requirements and has been widely used in the field of orthopedic, plastic surgery, rehabilitation research and so on. Compared with CT, MRI and other traditional methods, it is rapid, accuracy and harmless to human body. Through the researches of main technology of character acquisition using laser scanning, it has been discovered that clinical requirements could be met fully through interrelated technologies. However, there are some problems, such as the segment of data must be given through an interactive or iterative process, cannot be automatically. Development of reverse engineering technology basing on integration, including measuring techniques, reconstruction techniques based on features and integration, collaborative design and digital manufacturing technology based on network, and how to extract characters quickly and accurately, all will be done in the future.