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| Science & Technology |
| Custom Bones |
| 2008-11-23 |
| Japanese hospitals are running a clinical trial on the world's first custom-made bones which would fit neatly into patients' skulls and eventually give way to real bones. If successful, the Japanese method could open the way for doctors to create new bones within hours of an accident so long as the patient has electronic data on file. Doctors usually mend defective bones by transplanting real bones or ceramic substitutes. The Japanese implants use a powder of calcium phosphate, the substance that makes up real bones. The new implants are called CT Bone as they are crafted using the patient's computer tomography (CT) data, a form of medical imaging. It can match the complicated structures of the jaw, cheek and other parts of the skull down to one millimetre (0.039 of an inch), a level significant enough to make a difference in human faces, researchers told AFP. "It can also be replaced by your own bone, which wasn't possible before" with conventional sintered ceramic bones, said Tsuyoshi Takato, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Medicine. The implants are currently limited to use in the skull because, unlike limbs, they do not have to carry the body weight. The custom-made bones are created from the calcium phosphate powder and a solidifying liquid which is more than 80 percent distilled water, using computer-assisted design. In the same way that an ink-jet printer propels droplets onto a piece of paper, a device squirts the liquid on a 0.1-millimetre-thick layer of the powder to form a desired shape. The device, which was developed with Tokyo-based firm Next 21, repeats the process and builds up layers that have different shapes. For example, 100 layers create a one-centimetre thick implant. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #4 Yup, my bad, too much Jack this Sunday. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2008-11-23 20:25 |
| #3 You mean sintering, right? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2008-11-23 18:43 |
| #2 New RNC conservative backbones? Cost and shipping? Too late for holiday delivery? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-11-23 17:34 |
| #1 It's called laser centering in the manufacturing world and it's quiet amazing. We make plastic ducting and prototype plastic pieces. They also use a metalic powder and can make splined shafts as hard as machined parts. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2008-11-23 17:24 |