Geometric morphometric techniques to design skull prostheses

Recently, we have begun to look at the use of patient specific radiological data as the source for highly accurate computer-aided-manufacture (CAM) of tissue engineered prosthetic implants. It is expected to facilitate highly accurate control of implant-host fit and complex internal structures that promote resorption. This work has been done with a 3D Systems (Valencia, CA) SLA 250/40 stereolithographic device. Stereolithographic CAM of PPF components begins with a computer-aided-design (CAD) STL (public stereolithography ASCII data format) file generated in a 3D (i.e., solid) CAD interface. Now that more than 20 patients have received implants produced in this fashion, we are beginning to look at more efficient ways to use stereolithographic production of skull prostheses. Previously we and other groups have used patient CT images as source data to print a skull model of the patient. These large skull models are expensive to produce. Additionally, the manual work that follows to design and manufacture an implant is also expensive. We will present new technology that allows us to print the implant directly thereby saving the cost of printing the patient's skull and expense of several generations of manual work.