T-Scan: First Experiences with Acquisition of Cleft Morphology

For capturing facial surfaces, different commercial systems are available. These conventional systems can be mainly divided into white-light-scanners, linear laser scanners and photogrammetric devices. The latest developments are based on holographic image acquisition. With all these devices shadowing effects will occur. These effects might be avoided by the use of a hand-held laser scanner with simultaneous registration. The T-Scan (Fa. Steinbichler, Germany [1]) is such a tracked scanning device. To assess the suitability of this scanner, a total of 16 scans (two infants with a lip-alveolus-palate cleft) were acquired by the same surgeon. Data sets with an accuracy of less than a millimetre were acquired.