Engineering assisted surgery: A route for digital design and manufacturing of customized maxillofacial implants

Abstract

Rapid prototyping (RP) and more recently rapid manufacturing (RM) as a part of Engineering Assisted Surgery enables manufacturing of customised implants and prostheses prior to surgical procedures. Beginning with CT or MRI scans, implants can be customised designed for a named patient and optimised for shape and mechanical requirements using digital data only, disregarding all physical models except for the final implant. In this paper, a route to digitise the design of an existing implant is described, consisting of transfer of CT data, design of the prostheses, FE analysis, rapid manufacturing from titanium, and quality control.