Computer-aided porous scaffold design for tissue engineering using triply periodic minimal surfaces

Abstract

Recently, computer aided geometric design of triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) has received considerable attention in the area of computer aided nano design on account of its ability to efficiently construct a large number of complex surfaces. In this paper, a TPMS is described with periodic surfaces composed of simple trigonometric functions, thus enabling easy generation of TPMS for use in various mechanical, chemical, and physical applications. We first describe a TPMS with mesh surface using conventional marching cube algorithm. We then propose various related algorithms for generating complete solid model for various applications, ranging from thickened solid, through voxel solid, to complexshaped solid. The validity of this new technique is demonstrated for a variety of TPMSs, including the P, G, D, I-WP, F-RD, L, and I 2 -Y** surfaces. Finally, a new control approach for pore size distribution in tissue scaffold design is presented based on the pore-making element composed of TPMS and conformal refinement of all-hexahedral mesh in order to show the practical applicability of the newly suggested modeling approach.

Three-dimensional human body model reconstruction and manufacturing from CT medical image data using a heterogeneous implicit solid based approach

“…Iso-material information can be used in manufacturing of human body replicas and tissue scaffolds. 38 As the material distribution is included within the model, we can manufacture more realistic body implants and design more bioactive tissue scaffold by providing precisely controlled architecture. Currently, a novel tissue scaffold design based on this work is under progress.…”

Recent trends and challenges in computer-aided design of additive manufacturing-based biomimetic scaffolds and bioartificial organs

“…6,10,57-68 Very recently, efficient methods for designing scaffold pore unit cell libraries have been developed by the use of triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) pore geometries. [69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79] Most of the commercial CAD systems are mainly based on solid or surface modeling systems. At the bulk scale, commonly used geometric design methods include boundary representation (B-Rep) and constructive solid geometry (CSG).…”

“…TPMSs are ideal to describe such a biomimetic geometry. 72,73,[75][76][77][78][79] The most important advantage of TPMS compared to the pore geometries based on conventional CAD-based manual design methods is the accurate and easy controllability of internal pore architectures, such as pore size, pore shape, porosity, etc. Moreover the entire design process can be fully automated by a computer program.…”

“…TPMSs are of special interest not only to the tissue engineer, but also to the structural engineer and material scientist because those appear in the natural and man-made worlds, providing a concise description for a variety of physical structures, such as silicates, bicontinuous composites, detergent films, and lipid bilayers. 72 Rajagopalan et al 69 designed simple cube types of P-scaffolds and manufactured with the layer-based fabrication device to realize coterminous seeding-feeding networks thereby guaranteeing blood/ nutrient supply to the proliferating cells. Melchels et al 70,71 presented a scaffold design methodology using TPMS.…”

Lightweight parametric optimisation method for cellular structures in additive manufactured parts

“…By optimising these internal structures, there is a potential to minimise material and weight, thus reducing the overall production cost and time. This concept has been applied in tissue engineering [3][4][5][6] and can potentially benefit other high-end industries such as aerospace or automotive sectors. This paper proposes an intelligent optimisation algorithm to optimise the design of the internal cellular structures (Figure 1).…”