Development of 3D Printed Bone Reduction with Fracture Lines in Different Color
The bone fragment and fracture lines may not clear enough to be visualized after bone reduction and may be hidden behind other bones. A 3D printing technology can be used to deal with this drawbacks. A series of algorithms were developed to ensure that two adjacent bone fragments fabricated can be assembled successfully. In this study, we developed a bone reduction algorithm, and a mesh-overlapping detection and removal algorithm to ensure that two 3D-printed fragments are easily assembled and disassembled. In addition, we also developed a method to detect and extract fracture boundary from two adjacent fragments, and then apply a multi-color 3D printing technology to fabricate the assembled bone fragments. The advantage of the proposed method is that we can show the status of 3D-printed bone fragments before and after bone reduction, with fracture lines printed in different color.