Patent ID: 7050877

Claim:
A method for modeling an implant to be applied to a defect of a bone, the defect having side walls, comprising: obtaining a plurality of tomographic image data of the bone based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurement data, the tomographic image data being obtained by inverting a threshold value of the MRI measurement data to obtain threshold value inverting data, and extracting a bone region from the threshold value inverting data; producing three-dimensional image data of the bone based on the plurality of tomographic image data; and estimating a shape of a missing bone that was previously present or should have been present in the defect of the bone to obtain three-dimensional data of the implant, wherein the three-dimensional data of the implant is modeled such that at least a part of an outer periphery of the implant is conformable with a shape of the side walls of the defect of the bone.