Medical

One of the major early adopters of rapid manufacturing has been the medical community. After all, there is simply no higher value-added application than the human body. A process that accommodates individual differences so well, and makes it economical to provide precisely customized compensatory goods and services is of very great interest indeed. This is reflected in the fact that there is essentially no portion of the human anatomy that is not in some measure, either being assisted now by additive fabrication, or being studied as a future application area.

Prosthetics and Implants
Prosthetic devices and implants have long been made using additive fabrication. Early work used rapid prototyping to fabricate casting patterns. The production of hip sockets, knee joints and spinal implants is now a fairly routine matter. In fact, one of the largest installations of RP equipment anywhere is the more than thirty Solidscape machines at Interpore Cross International used to make casting patterns for spinal implants.

More recently, implants with optimized geometries have been fabricated directly in high-strength final materials using advanced processes such as laser powder forming. Hip sockets made this way can be expected to last considerably longer than the typical ten year lifetime of present devices, providing a better medical result for younger patients.

The direct fabrication of bone replacements is under development using several additive technologies. Selective laser sintering of polymer-coated calcium phosphate and hydroxyapatite powders are among the most advanced methods. Three Dimensional Printing and photopolymer-based methods are also being investigated. Such structures are actually tissue engineering scaffolds that provide a mechanical framework that dissolves away as real cells and tissue replace it. Additive fabrication of active bone grafts permits the pore structure to be controlled and also allows items such as enzyme inhibitors and diffusion barriers to be incorporated.

    

Plastic Surgery and reconstruction prosthetics are also of very great interest. Breast and similar prosthetic devices are being pursued, as are customized mandible substitutes and anatomically accurate prostheses for craniomaxillofacial reconstruction. Recent work on reinforcing collars for hearts may lessen or eliminate the need for a heart transplant The structure reinforces heart walls and holds them in a more normal geometry allowing enlarged hearts or others damaged by disease to function more efficiently.

    

Tissue Engineering
Scaffold structures are being investigated to use in the replacement or regeneration of many organs in addition to bone. Additive fabrication is one of the main tools in the armamentarium of researchers working in this field. The long-term prospect is for entire, complex, vascularized organs to be fabricated by such methods. It will be many years before this comes to pass, but useful incremental developments should be available along the way. For example, it will likely be decades before a complete heart can be produced, but the availability of a heart valve would be extremely valuable and might be accomplished many years earlier.

The direct printing of living tissues is also being pursued. Groups in both the US and Europe are using inkjet technology to deposit live cells. Envisiontec GmbH (Germany) produces the Bioplotter (TM), the first commercially available system expressly designed for depositing living cells. The system deposits the cells in a hydrogel and was originally developed at the Freiburg Materials Research Center.

Pharmaceuticals...

Dental Applications...

Medical Devices...