CARTIS members, Dominic Eggbeer & Sean Peel recently attended the Materialise World Conference in Leuven, Belgium.  The conference brought together around 500 world leading researchers, medical specialists, engineers and business leaders to discuss state of the art applications in additive manufacturing. 

The conference split into two medical themes (orthopaedic & cardiac) and automotive, but also introduced translational areas of advanced manufacturing.  The medical stream provided a fascinating insight into the ways in which technology is being applied to improve patient outcomes and deliver services more efficiently.  Particular highlights included learning how accurate surgical guides can be used to salvage limbs that would have otherwise been amputated or require the joint surfaces being removed, details of Belgium’s first full face transplant and how industrial design is being used to revolutionise the way limb prosthetics are styled. 

The conference also provided the ideal platform for Dominic & Sean to meet fellow researchers and make new contacts. 

Details on the conference can be found here. 

The Orthodontic Technicians Association (OTA) annual conference returned to Cardiff this year for the 4th time.  This year, it was chaired by Mr Jeff Lewis, Lecturer in Dental Technology at Cardiff Metropolitan University.  

CARTIS board member and secretary, Peter Evans presented research on 'Digital Technology in Maxillofacial Prosthetics' as an invited speaker for the Saturday Programme chaired by Dr Les Joffe.  This was followed by a presentation by Dr Bob Williams, Reader and Principal Lecturer in Dental Technology at UWIC, who is working closely with PDR and CARTIS in pioneering applications of CAD and additive manufacturing in dental technology.  Dr Williams presented research into 'The Applications of CAD/CAM Additive Technologies in Orthodontics' 

Both presentations led to an interesting debate on the influence of these emerging technologies for Orthodontics and the skill required by dental technicians of the future. 

CARTIS continues to promote and interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the effectiveness of emerging, computer-aided technologies in dental and prosthetic device design and welcomes the opportunity to disseminate and discuss findings.

For further details of the OTA conference, click here.

PDR's Medical Applications Group (MAG) has improved it's range of services on offer to Welsh companies involved in the design and manufacture of personalised medical devices.  

Through the addition of the KeyShot visualisation software package, companies engaging with the Patient-Specific Medical Design Knowledge Transfer Centre can now access photo-realistic rendering capabilities. The enhanced communication this facilitates can be exploited to judge early concepts within the partner's organisation, evaluate more developed ideas with clients, and create persuasive presentations to showcase a final design.

Whether you have a product or process that could benefit from being made patient-specific, an entirely new concept, or a passion to explore the opportunities for your organisation, we want to work with you.

We can help you to scope ideas, introduce you to advanced product development technologies that enable patient-specific device production, and identify routes to effective application. 

Please contact us via our online enquiry form.

Ever wondered how facial prostheses are made?  Ever wanted to have go at making one yourself?  Now you have a chance.

CARTIS are throwing their doors open to give designers, medical engineers and artists the chance to get hands on experience of the latest technologies and produce their own prostheses.  A three day course (23^rd-25^th  May 2012) will demonstrate how technologies more commonly used in the product development sector, can be used to create more lifelike prostheses.   This hands on workshop will give delegates the chance to work via computer aided design and 3D-printing to create a prostheses that they can take away with them.

“Whether you’re a designer, medical engineer or an artist, this is an exciting opportunity to engage with the latest digital technologies that are part of the new industrial revolution” (Dominic Eggbeer, CARTIS board member). 

CARTIS have worked for a number of years with expert research groups around the world to discover innovative ways of rebuilding lost facial anatomy.  From cancer patients to traumatic injuries, improvements in medical treatments mean that more people require complex prostheses to disguise facial disfigurement.  This is a chance to get a hands on insight of their work and have a go yourself.

Time is running out to book a place, so for further information on the course and to book your place, click here. 

Peter Dorrington, who joined PDR in Jan. 2011 has just been awarded his Ph.D.  His thesis is titled an investigation of the UK micro- and nano- technology government intervention.  His thesis is available to download at http://orca.cf.ac.uk/17870/.

This study investigated a recent UK Government Intervention established to develop Micro- and Nano- Technologies (MNTs) for technology-based economic growth. While the need for such innovation policies is well recognised, there is also a need to understand the key challenges to developing effective policy interventions for the innovation process that will create sound economic leverage. This PhD investigates these challenges and presents findings for both an academic and practitioner audience.

Peter is a crucial member of the CARTIS team and brings a unique and valuable angle to research capabilities.  He has recently been instrumental in working with the Rehabilitation Engineering Department at Morriston Hospital to establish the Devices for Dignity project and continues to help pioneer developments in patient-specific medical device design. 

PDR has introduced another revolutionary stereolithgraphy resin for improved part quality.  Following the introduction of the tough new 3D-Systems, Accura Xtreme resin a few months ago, PDR are the first in the UK to use Accura ClearVue in their second SLA machine. 

The resin enables the production of extremely transparent, durable parts for low volume manufacturing or prototyping applications. 

For medical applications, the resin has undergone FDA USP VI testing, has low moisture absorption and can be selectively coloured to highlight anatomical features or other product details.   

For further details on how the range of services and materials available through PDR and CARTIS can work for you, please contact us. 

PDR’s Medical Applications Group (MAG) has been successful in a collaborative bid with Morriston Hospital’s Rehabilitation Engineering Unit in the area of assistive technologies. £15,000 of funding has been awarded by ‘Devices for Dignity (D4D)’ to develop an Electromyography (EMG) stand alone switch which enables severely disabled users to independently control their environment or access communication by using tiny muscle actions; sometimes their only reliable movement. Usually these switches require powerful computers but this project intends to create a switch that can work independently of other equipment.

This collaborative project adopts a multi-disciplinary approach for the design and development of a device that will improve the lives of disabled individuals. PDR provides specific expertise from its patient-specific design centre.

Further information can be found at: http://www.devicesfordignity.org.uk/news/82-d4d-funding-for-the-future-of-healthcare

Peter Evans from CARTIS will be speaking on zygomatic implants for nasal reconstruction at the Implantology for the Compromised Patient conference.  Peter was invited to present his state-of-the-art work at the conference, which will be held at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands from the 1^st-4^th Feb. 2012. 

Due to their length, zygomatic implants are notoriously difficult to place accurately.  Techniques developed by CARTIS utilise 3D surgical planning and patient specific drilling guides, which improve accuracy and make the procedure more predictable for the surgical team.

Steffan Daniel, who is based at the National Centre for Product Design and Development Research at Cardiff Metropolitan University, is currently in his final year of a 3 year Ph.D. project focusing on using Computer Aided Design techniques within the field of Maxillofacial prosthetics. He joined the CARTIS team at the beginning of his studies, we caught up with him to find out how his research has been going.

How did you get involved in this specialised field?  

In 2009 I studied for an MSc in Advanced Product Design at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and had taken on a series of work placements in product design. My interests lay in using design and engineering for positive impact and found myself interested in how design techniques and research could be used in the medical field. From this, I discovered the Medical Applications Group at The National Centre for Product Design and Research where I became very intrigued by some of the research being conducted there, in applying digital design techniques to facial reconstruction and prosthetics.

Give me some background information on your research.  

Computer Aided Design technologies are now a well established means of designing, prototyping and manufacturing products in all different kinds of industries. The development and adoption of these advanced technologies is growing at an increased rate in the medical device industry and there has been work and research conducted in patient-specific medical devices. Examples include medical modelling, surgical cutting guides, custom implants, burns masks, tissue scaffolds and facial prostheses.  There is significant scope for further research in these areas and particularly in the field of maxillofacial prosthetics.

Extra-oral maxillofacial prosthetics tends to categorise itself between dental technology and prosthetics where many design techniques are adopted from both fields but there are limited standards controlling the levels of quality and accuracy in the design process. This is especially true with regards to mechanisms that retain facial prostheses.  There is opportunity here to incorporate Computer Aided Design technologies into the process of designing and creating prosthesis retention systems and create a comparable process to the traditional methods. This is an area of research that has been neglected in many published case studies, and so this is where my research comes in.

What exactly does your Ph.D. focus on then? 

My research is firstly about evaluating the design and manufacturing process of prosthesis retention mechanisms. A series of interviews with Maxillofacial Prosthetists were conducted and following this a survey for prosthetists was sent out with the IMPT newsletter. The interviews and surveys focused on developing a design criteria for retention mechanisms and offered lots of data on the techniques used in clinical practice, difficulties involved in the process and the importance of various design features and stages in the process.

The second phase in the research has been to evaluate traditionally-made retention mechanisms in comparison to ones created using experimental Computer Aided Design techniques. This is about taking the traditional models as a benchmark in performance and evaluating if CAD technologies can match that benchmark performance. The outcome of this research is about proposing appropriate digital processes for integrating retention mechanism design and fabrication into the overall prosthesis process.  This may be using a combination of surface scanning techniques, CAD software and Rapid Prototyping processes.

What are the next stages in your research?

2012 will mainly be about writing up the research so far, but some of the studies are still in progress. I would like to learn more about the application of this research to the clinical environment.

What have been the highlights during your study?

I was fortunate to be flown over to Freiburg, Germany in 2011 to present some of my research at the 4^th International Conference in Advanced Digital Technology in Head and Neck Reconstruction. This was undoubtedly a valuable experience and to share my research with a variety of prosthetists, surgeons and technologists at an international level was fantastic. These events enable researchers to create a wider circle of professional contacts and offer opportunities to discuss potential collaborative future projects. I was also able to get involved with some Workshops on Digital Technologies in Maxillofacial Prosthetics. This was a good chance to learn how new techniques and knowledge could be shared between technologists and clinicians.

A major benefit of researching an area within the medical technology field is that there are lots of opportunities to collaborate with industry or other academic organisations. My PhD studies have provided me with chances to work with companies like Renishaw – who have provided access to some high quality, advanced measurement machines for some of my research. It gives you a taste of working with an industrial partner and establishes links with industrial contacts if you wish to work in industry post-Ph.D.

The PhD has given me opportunities to work with clinicians during my studies, which is a key factor in developing medical devices and processes. Embarking on a Ph.D. has been a steep learning curve in working with experts in other disciplines. This is extremely important in today’s world, which promotes multi-disciplinary collaboration.

When do you hope to graduate?

I hope to submit my thesis at the end of this year, so hoping to graduate some time (!) in 2013. Wish me luck!

On the 12^th Jan, 2012, a workshop with the aim to clarify a research strategy for developing state of the art clinical practice in maxillofacial prosthetics was held at Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University.   

The workshop brought together a small number of some of the UKs leading maxillofacial prosthetists and researchers to discuss major themes that will help to develop a structured approach to research in the area.

The workshop was joint organised by researchers from CARTIS, Dominic Eggbeer and Richard Bibb, and Russell Harris from the Additive Manufacturing Research Group at Loughborough University.  It also formed the first in a series of three EPSRC funded workshops organised by Ian Campbell of Loughborough Design School.