Exploring the New Generation of Virtual Surgical Planning: Mimics Enlight CMF

With this support, hospitals can streamline their planning processes, significantly reducing turnaround times and costs associated with outsourcing, thus ensuring more efficient patient care. And with developments in automated, surgery-specific workflows, progress in this field will only continue to accelerate.

In a recent webinar, Dr. Renaat Coopman, Head of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, and Dr. Matthias Ureel, MD, DDS, from UZ Gent joined Arsham Makaryan, one of our medical application specialists, dive into how they accelerate surgical planning with Mimics Enlight CMF — our virtual planner developed in collaboration with surgeons.

First, Dr. Coopman gave a demonstration of the orthognathic planner, walking the audience through his typical workflow for preoperative planning. Mimics Enlight CMF offers a step-by-step experience for surgeons, from segmentation to splint design, so they can complete each task in a just few clicks.

“The Mimics Enlight CMF software is quite intuitive,” explains Dr. Coopman. “I can guarantee that new users will find their way in an hour or hour and a half max.”

This demo is an abbreviated version of Dr. Coopman’s workflow, but the full plan can typically be ready in under 25 minutes. That includes building a composite model, planning osteotomies, checking cephalometric landmarks, and designing splints.

With the help of virtual planning, hospitals can navigate orthognathic surgeries with greater confidence and efficiency, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

The other surgical planning workflow offered in Mimics Enlight CMF is for reconstructive surgery. This process was highlighted by Dr. Ureel, including a walkthrough on how he segments the anatomy, plans osteotomies, and automatically calculates the fibula sequence.

The reconstruction planner is quite similar to the orthognathic version, offering clear guidance through each stage. Of course, reconstruction cases require planning for the bone graft as well, which is also taken into account in the workflow. Rounding off the demonstration, Dr. Ureel shared how you can generate cutting planes to later be designed as cutting guides in 3-matic before printing.

“It’s extremely fast,” shares Dr. Ureel. “If you have all the necessary information upfront, you can complete the planning in 15 – 20 minutes.” In addition to the speed, 3D planning also helps hospitals achieve greater precision and adaptability in their reconstruction cases, optimizing patient care and resources. Surgeons can adapt their plans at any time and easily keep colleagues in the loop with Materialise software.

The virtual workflow for occlusion and splint design also proves to be reliable and efficient when compared to manual processes. Arsham demonstrated the potential here, first walking the audience through the different ways they can virtually set the occlusion: using three contact points, one contact point, or free movement.

When asked about their opinion on this tool, Dr. Ureel said, “In our experience, it’s equally as good as manual occlusion.”

To wrap up the demonstrations, Arsham then shared the process for splint design. After some changes to the parameters and adding wiring holes and bevels, he quickly has an STL file of the final splint, ready for 3D printing.

With a user-friendly interface, real-time feedback mechanisms, and automated tools, 3D planning tools can help hospitals reduce costs, improve efficiency, and gain greater control over surgical outcomes. Now that you know more about Mimics Enlight CMF, check out the on-demand version of the webinar to see how Dr. Coopman and Dr. Ureel use it in real cases.