Medical rapid prototyping and 3D CT in the manufacture of custom made cranial titanium plates

This report describes a new method of custom making cranial titanium plates for the repair of skull defects. We have combined 3D CT imaging and surface modelling with rapid prototyping (RP) technology to produce physical models of our patients' skulls from which custom titanium plates were made. We have expanded the use of image processing tools applied to the CT image data to fabricate a representation of the skull defect. Medical RP models are relatively expensive and particular attention has been paid to developing image processing methods to reduce costs. Our technique used the patient as their own model and generated data from the contralateral side of the head where appropriate. We present the results of 10 patients who have had a custom made cranial titanium plate fitted and discuss the models for these cases. The benefits of our custom made titanium plates are reduced patient attendances to hospital and a more accurate titanium plate which has improved fitting and cosmesis.