Design and fabrication of dental implant prototypes using additive manufacturing

Tissue engineering possesses some unique qualities which can help to treat different orthopedics diseases and problems caused by any trauma or accident. Additive manufacturing technology has gained ground in printing scaffolds and implants compatible in the biological system using biomaterials. These can be used in surgical planning and for satisfactory accuracy. A patient specific implant design can be manufactured by this technology. This research deals with the challenge of designing the dental implant using open source available applications and a commercial three-dimensional printer. A methodology has been described to attain the accurate design in the designing applications and in also their printing. The steps involved the conversion of CT or MRI Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) raw image data to a virtual 3D structure by Materialise Mimics 20.0. The 3D structure is meshed in the open source application via. Autodesk Meshmixer. Simplify 3D was used to transfer the data to be printed, to the 3D printer. The obtained prototypes of the dental implants were satisfactory in design and the same methodology can be used to build any dental implant with compatible biomaterial.