Flattening Algorithm for Skin Wounds Based on Finite Element Method in Preoperative Flap Design

Skin flap grafting is a common clinical means for the treatment of broken skin wounds,and the shape of the flap is often determined by sample cloth for preoperative design.Due to the complex surface morphology of the wound,obtained flaps have low precision and poor postoperative healing results.A deformation energy-based flattening method for skin wounds is proposed.Firstly,the wound model is divided into layers by hierarchical value and flattened to a plane topologically.The material properties are then assigned to triangle elements on the wound model by finite element method,and defines the deformation energy of the element during flattening,simulating the deformation when the flap covers the wound.Finally,the shape of the flap can be adjusted by deformation energy to achieve regional optimization of the flap shape and preoperative design.The results of analyses of a dozen complex wound models showed that the optimized method could reduce the area error to within 5.63%and the deformation energy could converge to the minimum stable value.