TPMS for interactive modelling of trabecular scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

Abstract

The aim of regenerative medicine is replacing missing or damaged bone tissues with synthetic grafts based on porous interconnected scaffolds, which allow adhesion, growth, and proliferation of the human cells. The optimal design of such scaffolds, in the Bone Tissue Engineering field, should meet several geometrical requirements. First, they have to be customized to replicate the skeletal anatomy of the patient, and then they have to provide the proper trabecular structure to be successfully populated by the cells. Therefore, for modelling such scaffolds, specific design methods are needed to conceive extremely complex structures by controlling both macro and micro shapes. For this purpose, in the last years, the Computer Aided Design of Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces has received considerable attention, since their presence in natural shapes and structures. In this work, we propose a method that exploit Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces as unit cell for the development of customized trabecular scaffolds. The aim is to identify the mathematical parameters of these surfaces in order to obtain the target requirements of the bone grafts. For that reason, the method is implemented through a Generative Design tool that allow to interactively controlling both the porosity and the pores size of the scaffolds.