A New Methodology for Designing a Skull Implant

Abstract

Cranioplasty is a surgery used to repair a bone defect in the skull caused by an injury. It involves lifting the scalp and restoring the contour of the skull with an implant usually manufactured by additive manufacturing. The cranial implant is a sensitive topic; thus, it must be manufactured to the highest standards. Medical implants are growing significantly due to industrial digitalization and the rapid development of industrial software. With the help of computed Tomography (CT) equipment, a spatial, rotating model of the patient's current state can be obtained quickly, even in minutes where the replacement part of the deficiency can be perfectly designed. Although this requires considerable routine, computational capacity, and time, but taking advantage of the latest software presented in our manuscript, the development time of the implant can be up to 50 times shorter with significant improvements in suitability and adaptability. Subsequently, we can produce more accurate implants with more accessible and faster manufacturing with our developed method. The development steps and methods of designing an implant are described in our article.