Overview

Currently this group's work spans many areas of 3D medical imaging, including CT, 3D Ultrasound and MRI; surgery planning, particularly for Maxillo-facial, and orthopedic work; prosthesis manufacture, particularly for cranioplasty and graphics-based training, including interactive anatomy and interactive surgical procedures (eg TURP). 

Historically this all began with early involvement in maxillo-facial surgery, with the construction of a 
Laser Surface Scanner, sold commercially and internationally and used for assessment of M-F surgery.
The need for surgical planning for complex M-F cases became apparent and led to the development of a 3D surgical planning 3D workstation. Based initially on parallel processing with transputers, this workstation was developed in-house and combined many rapid, high quality imaging functions with powerful 'surgery' or editing functions, allowing the 3D solid voxel data to be cut, moved and joined. The functions available on this workstation have been vital in many clinical applications, with which we have reported new work.

We have been amongst the leaders in early work on 3D CT and 3D ultrasound imaging, with the ability to edit easily proving of great value in visualising complex anatomical structures.

We have developed prosthesis manufacturing methods using data taken directly from the 3D images to a CNC milling machine. Manufacture of Titanium cranioplasties is a routine service available Nationally, with data transfers being made by the internet as well as the more traditional old magtapes and other media.