Morphology-controllable modeling approach for a porous scaffold structure in tissue engineering

Abstract

Heterogeneous structures represent an important new frontier for twenty-first-century engineering. In this paper, based on the shape function in the finite element method, a morphology-controllable modelling approach for constructing tissue engineering (TE) bone scaffold with various irregular pores is presented. The modelling approach consists of both irregular element modelling and the whole bone scaffold modelling. Accepting the elements’ information after all-hex mesh generation as inputs, the basic pore-making element can be mapped into various irregular elements based on the shape function. In the bone scaffold modelling, the Boolean difference between the contour model of the solid entity and the pore model which can be constructed by the Boolean operation union would generate a porous bone scaffold model. Compared to the stochastic geometry method and the discrete element packing method, the bone scaffold model obtained in this paper has a continuous, smooth contour and various irregular pores. Moreover, a decrease in computational complexity is achieved in this paper.

Keywords:

• bone scaffold
• shape function
• pore
• tissue engineering
• modelling
• Boolean operation

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50575139) and were supported by the Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (No. B06012) during the course of this research. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their valuable comments, suggestions and corrections.