  Open charm mesons produced in high energy A-A interactions are expected to be
powerful probes to investigate the medium produced in the collision. In this
context it is important to measure the production of as many charmed hadrons as
possible, such as D$^0$, D$^+$, D$^+_s$ and $\Lambda_c$, because the
measurement of their relative yield can provide information on the
hadronization mechanism and is necessary to reduce the systematic error on the
absolute cross section. The ALICE experiment at the LHC is designed to perform
such measurements at midrapidity down to $p_T$ below 1 GeV/c, mainly by means
of the silicon vertex and tracker detector, the time projection chamber and the
time of flight detector. One of the main channels for the detection of charm
production in ALICE is the exclusive reconstruction of the D$^+$ meson through
its three charged body decay $K^-\pi^+\pi^+$ in Pb-Pb ($\sqrt s=5.5$ TeV) and
pp ($\sqrt s=14$ TeV) collisions. The selection strategies for this analysis
and the results of a feasibility study on Monte Carlo events will be presented
together with the perspectives for the study of D$^+$ quenching and azimuthal
anisotropy measurements.
