Output details

Computed tomography characterisation of additive manufacturing materials

The results of this study were analysed to ascertain average Computed Tomography (CT) number (also known as Hounsfield Unit). This enables materials to be compared with existing materials and the appearance in other CT equipment to be predicted. This will be crucial in designing medical products that are specifically intended to be visible (or not) in radiographic images. As Additive Manufacturing (AM) is being increasingly used to manufacture bespoke, custom-fitting or personalised medical and rehabilitation devices issues of radiographic appearance is a critical safety factor in the design of new products exploiting AM. A significant and unpredicted finding was the similarity of several AM materials to human tissues. These findings will be crucial in enabling exploitation of AM in the design and manufacture of radiographic training devices that can be designed to replicate specific human tissues and pathologies.

The initial study has been expanded with more AM materials tested and work is ongoing, e.g. Further work presented at the European Medical Physics & Engineering Conference, Dublin 2011. The work was published in the journal where maximum academic scrutiny of the methods and findings would be assured and the widest audience could be reached. The expanded data will be published more widely to medical, technical and industrial audiences in the future. This article was internationally blind peer-reviewed by multiple reviewers.