Scaffold modeling application in the repair of skull defects: Thoughts and progress

Abstract

The repair of large segmental bone defects caused by trauma, inflammation, and surgery on tumors pose a major clinical challenge. Tissue-engineered bone is emerging as a good choice for prefabricating cellular scaffold, and computer-aided technologies and medical imaging have created new possibilities in biomedical engineering. An accurate and efficient construction of anatomic models is critical to the application of these computational methods. Such models must be validated prior to application. In this article, we explore the potential of combining these techniques to scaffold and repair a pediatric skull. Working under the hypothesis that the autogenously cultivated osteoblasts can be grown on individualized scaffolds to improve bone regeneration in skull defects, we focus our study on potential problems concerning the segmentation, reconstruction, and mesh simplification for a pediatric skull. We also propose a new framework to improve the accuracy of the model entity from image segmentation to mesh simplification. © 2010, International Center for Artificial Organs and Transplantation and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.