Innovative design technology: An optimal surgical aid system for Hip Resurfacing Arthroplasty

Hip Resurfacing Arthroplasty (HRA) is a treatment option for the patients with the advanced hip disease; it is considered as the most technically difficult techniques of all procedures recommended for osteonecrosis of the hip. Technically, the currently applied HRA surgeries lead to unstable and inconsistent results. Surgeons rely a lot on the manual technique and conventional tools as well as their skills to determine the right drilling angle for locating the implant system. Although the robotic and surgical planning systems are available for HRA, the drilling line is still defined geometrically and intra-operatively, not fully considering about the biomechanics aspects of the implant and bone structure. In this paper, an optimal surgical aid system for HRA is proposed. With the integration of the state of the art biomedical modelling, pre-operative planning and personalised surgical tools, knowledge based and expert system, as well as biomechanics modelling and analysis, the precision, safety and speed of surgery are improved, the complexity of surgery is reduced, and therefore the survival rate of the implant is increased. Especially, the proposed system provides a cheap and practically feasible solution with the integration of expertise from both engineering and medicine for improving the treatment quality of the patients

Design challenges for implementing a customer driven mass-customisation system

The trend towards highly customised products and services creates challenges in that as products become ever more individualised the customer will start to become the product designer and will need to be able to deal with the challenges that a professional product designer has to address. A novice, non-designer, customer will know how they want their product to look but may be unaware of the engineering and production limitations that will prevent them from realising their desire. This presents massive problems when reconciling the desires and needs of the customer with the need to achieve mass-production levels of efficiency. This paper examines the challenges that must be overcome in order to enable consumers to actively participate in the design of customised products and proposes a potential system to do thi

Reverse engineering and rapid prototyping for new orthotic devices

The main aim of the study is to propose new personalized 3D designed elbow orthoses and new ankle-foot orthoses using reverse engineering and rapid prototyping. A general reverse engineering procedure was used including: data acquisition, preprocessing, contours and surface fitting and CAD model creation. Mituyoto CMM machine and Hymarc Laser Scanning system were used for scanning data acquisition. Different scanning angles were used to cover all the scanning points representing the human upper limb and the ankle-foot complex. The point cloud data were obtained. Preprocessing was used in order to remove the redundant point data and noises and to reconstruct the point cloud data into "optimal" data for CAD modelling. CopyCAD software was used for pre-processing the scanning data and for contours and surface fitting. Based on the contours representing arm and ankle-foot geometry, surface and solid models were constructed in CAD/CAM modelling packages such as ProEngineer and UG. Error analysis was used to estimate the differences between the CAD models and the original point cloud data. ProEngineer were used to design the new orthotic devices. Wax print models of the upper limb and ankle-foot Complex were obtained, laser scanned, CAD reconstructed and compared to the direct scanned CAD models. Different polymers versions of new devices were manufactured using rapid prototyping. Prototypes of new orthotic devices were obtained and analyzed

A cheap technical solution for cranioplasty treatments

Skull defects are treated by cranioplasty techniques, which are required to protect underlying brain, correct major aesthetic deformities, or both. This research is a part of our research project in ASEAN countries to investigate (i) the methods for design and manufacturing of cranioplasty implants, and (ii) the feasible technical solutions of minimizing the implant cost based on available production and biomaterial technologies in the region. In this paper, solutions for design and manufacturing of standardized implant templates (SDT) are presented. SDT are made based on the reverse engineering and rapid tooling techniques. With the use of SDT,surgeons have flexible options in preparing the implant both pre and intra operatively, and the operation time is minimized. In addition, the skills required to prepare an implant from SDT are not highly required. The cost for cranioplasty treatments by using SDT is acceptable for ASEAN region

Design and manufacturing of personalized implants and standardized templates for cranioplasty applications

Cranial (skull) defects are treated by the cranioplasty technique, which is required to protect underlying brain, correct major aesthetic deformities, or both. This research was aimed at investigating the technical solutions for cranioplasty treatments for the ASEAN countries based on available production and material technologies in this region. Solutions for design and manufacturing of personalized cranioplasty implants and a new concept of standardized templates (SDTs) for cranioplasty applications are presented. SDTs are made in mass production, based on the reverse engineering and rapid tooling techniques; they are used for preparing cranioplasty implants both pre- and intra-operatively. With the development of the design support database and program interfacing between the Medical Image Processing (MIP) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) system, the design time for the personalized cranioplasty implant was minimized to half a day. Through the use of SDTs, surgeons have a new solution to prepare implants in which the required skills are reduced. The cost of implants made by proposed solutions is acceptable for the ASEAN region

Medical rapid prototyping applications and methods

Purpose – Aims to investigate medical rapid prototyping (medical RP) technology applications and methods based on reverse engineering (RE) and medical imaging data. Design/methodology/approach – Medical image processing and RE are applied to construct three-dimensional models of anatomical structures, from which custom-made (personalized) medical applications are developed. Findings – The investigated methods were successfully used for design and manufacturing of biomodels, surgical aid tools, implants, medical devices and surgical training models. More than 40 medical RP applications were implemented in Europe and Asia since 1999. Research limitations/implications – Medical RP is a multi-discipline area. It involves in many human resources and requires high skills and know-how in both engineering and medicine. In addition, medical RP applications are expensive, especially for low-income countries. These practically limit its benefits and applications in hospitals. Practical implications – In order to transfer medical RP into hospitals successfully, a good link and close collaboration between medical and engineering sites should be established. Moreover, new medical applications should be developed in the way that does not change the traditional approaches that medical doctors (MD) were trained, but provides solutions to improve the diagnosis and treatment quality. Originality/value – The presented state-of-the-art medical RP is applied for diagnosis and treatment in the following medical areas: cranio-maxillofacial and dental surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, orthosis and tissue engineering. The paper is useful for MD (radiologists and surgeons), biomedical and RP/CAD/CAM engineers

3D Printing for Rapid Manufacturing: Study of Dimensional and Geometrical Accuracy

Part 3: StrategyInternational audience3D printing (3DP) is one of the innovative developments in rapid prototyping (RP) technology. The goal of the initial inception and progress of the technology was to assist the product development phase of product design and manufacturing. The technology has played an important role in educating product design and 3D modeling because it helps students/designer to visualize their design idea, to enhance their creative design process and enables them to touch and feel the result of their innovative work. This paper presents the results of the study done on the in-built potentials and limitations of 3DP technology when used for rapid manufacturing purposes