Wang Zhujiang, Dubrowski Adam
Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, CAN.
Cureus. 2021 Mar 16;13(3):e13934. doi: 10.7759/cureus.13934.
Three-dimensional (3D) printed splints are becoming more feasible in recent years, showing promising lightweight, waterproof, and hygienic designs. A typical procedure to create 3D printed splints is obtaining the geometry of a body segment using a 3D scanner, creating a 3D printable splint model based on the geometry of the body segment, and 3D printing the splint. As technologies of 3D scanning and 3D printing become mature gradually, the main challenge to fabricate 3D printed splint is to create 3D printable splint models. To solve this challenge, researchers have proposed various methods to design 3D splint models. However, most methods require extensive 3D modeling skills that medical professionals are lacking. In this work, a semi-automatic method is proposed to create a 3D printable model. Given the geometry of a body segment obtained through a 3D scanner, the method includes three key steps: (1) create a draft splint lattice structure, (2) optimize the splint structure, and (3) create a 3D printable model based on the optimized structure. All the software adopted for this method is free and readily available, and thus, there is no additional cost to convert from a scanned geometry of a body segment to a 3D printable splint model. Because the majority of the work is done automatically, with initial training, a medical professional should be able to create a 3D printable model using the proposed method, given the geometry of a body segment. The proposed method is demonstrated by creating a 3D printed wrist splint and the demo is uploaded into GitHub, a popular open-source platform.
近年来，三维（3D）打印夹板变得越来越可行，展现出了轻便、防水和卫生的设计优势。创建3D打印夹板的典型流程是使用3D扫描仪获取身体部位的几何形状，基于该身体部位的几何形状创建3D可打印夹板模型，然后3D打印该夹板。随着3D扫描和3D打印技术逐渐成熟，制造3D打印夹板的主要挑战在于创建3D可打印夹板模型。为应对这一挑战，研究人员提出了各种设计3D夹板模型的方法。然而，大多数方法都需要医学专业人员所缺乏的广泛3D建模技能。在这项工作中，提出了一种半自动方法来创建3D可打印模型。给定通过3D扫描仪获得的身体部位的几何形状，该方法包括三个关键步骤：（1）创建初步的夹板晶格结构，（2）优化夹板结构，以及（3）基于优化后的结构创建3D可打印模型。此方法所采用的所有软件都是免费且易于获取的，因此，从身体部位的扫描几何形状转换为3D可打印夹板模型无需额外成本。由于大部分工作是自动完成的，经过初步培训后，医学专业人员在给定身体部位几何形状的情况下，应该能够使用所提出的方法创建3D可打印模型。通过创建一个3D打印手腕夹板对所提出的方法进行了演示，并且该演示已上传到热门开源平台GitHub上。
