3D printed human humerus bone with proximal implant prototype for arthroplasty

Human shoulder joints are susceptible to failure due to Osteonecrosis. It occurs at the humeral head region thereby collapsing it. For repair, resurfacing arthroplasty is used which involves reshaping of the humerus bone head and preparing an implant. But it is a tedious process to prepare the bone implant conventionally. This article presents developing prototype of a customized implant on human humerus bone that can act as an alternative to the conventional manufacturing of implants. 3D scanning technology is employed for acquisition of data of humerus bone in the form of point cloud which acts as an input for its modeling. Morphometric measurements of the bone are used to develop the resurfacing implant for proximal humerus. The humerus head is reshaped using Boolean operations and assembled with resurfacing implant. CATIA software is used for CAD modeling and related operations. Static structural analysis is performed on humerus bone and reshaped humerus bone with implant in ANSYS software to know its behaviour during different loading conditions. Fused Deposition Modeling technology has been used for 3D printing of humerus bone and its implant. However, the procedure for geometric modeling of such complex shape bone and its proximal implant has not been well defined.