Design and Additive Manufacturing of a Biomimetic Customized Cranial Implant Based on Voronoi Diagram

Neha Sharma; Daniel Ostas; Horatiu Rotar; Philipp Brantner; Florian Markus Thieringer

doi:10.3389/fphys.2021.647923

Design and Additive Manufacturing of a Biomimetic Customized Cranial Implant Based on Voronoi Diagram

Front Physiol. 2021 Apr 9:12:647923. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2021.647923. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Neha Sharma^{1

2}, Daniel Ostas³, Horatiu Rotar³, Philipp Brantner^{2

4}, Florian Markus Thieringer^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Clinic of Oral and Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Additive Manufacturing Research Group (SwissMAM), University of Basel, Allschwil, Switzerland.
³ Department of Oral and Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, "Iuliu Hatieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
⁴ Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

Abstract

Reconstruction of cranial defects is an arduous task for craniomaxillofacial surgeons. Additive manufacturing (AM) or three-dimensional (3D) printing of titanium patient-specific implants (PSIs) made its way into cranioplasty, improving the clinical outcomes in complex surgical procedures. There has been a significant interest within the medical community in redesigning implants based on natural analogies. This paper proposes a workflow to create a biomimetic patient-specific cranial prosthesis with an interconnected strut macrostructure mimicking bone trabeculae. The method implements an interactive generative design approach based on the Voronoi diagram or tessellations. Furthermore, the quasi-self-supporting fabrication feasibility of the biomimetic, lightweight titanium cranial prosthesis design is assessed using Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology.

Keywords: 3D printing; Voronoi diagram; additive manufacturing; biomimetics; computer-aided design; cranial reconstruction; patient-specific implant; selective laser melting.