Lin Liulan

Design and Fabrication of Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds via Rapid Prototyping and CAD

Abstract It is an important aspect that rapid prototyping technique can be used into tissue engineering. Biomimetic porous scaffolds made of calcium phosphate mineral are promising structures to develop bone substitute. Bone tissue engineering scaffold characteristics and properties are often considered to be critical factors in their design and fabrication. In this paper according to their demand, some scaffolds were introduced and designed with Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. In order to fabricate the scaffolds, biomaterials, β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), and polymeric blends were used on a selective laser sintering (SLS) system, a kind of rapid prototyping machine, to produce specimens. Then the specimens were treated by high temperature to assess their suitability on SLS processing.

Microstructural Comparison and Analysis of Bone Scaffold Prepared by FDM and SLS Process

Three-dimensional (3D) micro-structure of bone scaffold played an important role in cell adhesion and reproduction. The introduction of 3D measuring techniques in bone research made it possible to capture the actual architecture of bone scaffold without assumptions of the structure type. Two bone scaffolds fabricated by FDM and SLS were reconstructed and analyzed, then were compared with 3D structure indices of canine femur specimens. Based on the direct 3D analysis, there were obvious differences between two scaffolds in structural characteristics. Scaffolds prepared by FDM showed a denser and plate structure, a lower porosity, the trabecular bone was thinner. While scaffolds prepared by SLS showed a rod-shaped structure, were closer to real canine femur specimens, had a higher inter-connectivity. Scaffolds prepared by these two methods had no significant anisotropy.