

Surgery for scoliosis, as well as other posterior spinal surgeries, frequently uses pedicle screws to fix an instrumentation on the spine. Misplacement of a screw can lead to intra- and post-operative complications. The objective of this study is to design patient-specific surgical templates to guide the drilling operation. From the CT-scan of a vertebra, the optimal drilling direction and limit angles are computed from an inverse projection of the pedicle limits. The first template design uses a surface-to-surface registration method and was constructed in a CAD system by subtracting the vertebra from a rectangular prism and a cylinder with the optimal orientation. This template and the vertebra were built using rapid prototyping. The second design uses a point-to-surface registration method and has 6 adjustable screws to adjust the orientation and length of the drilling support device. A mechanism was designed to hold it in place on the spinal process. A virtual prototype was build with CATIA software. During the operation, the surgeon places either template on patient’s vertebra until a perfect match is obtained before drilling. The second design seems better than the first one because it can be reused on different vertebra and is less sensible to registration errors. The next step is to build the second design and make experimental and simulations tests to evaluate the benefits of this template during a scoliosis operation.