title: Sensitivity analysis of geometric errors in additive manufacturing medical models.
abstract: Additive manufacturing (AM) models are used in medical applications for surgical planning, prosthesis design and teaching. For these applications, the accuracy of the AM models is essential. Unfortunately, this accuracy is compromised due to errors introduced by each of the building steps: image acquisition, segmentation, triangulation, printing and infiltration. However, the contribution of each step to the final error remains unclear. We performed a sensitivity analysis comparing errors obtained from a reference with those obtained modifying parameters of each building step. Our analysis considered global indexes to evaluate the overall error, and local indexes to show how this error is distributed along the surface of the AM models. Our results show that the standard building process tends to overestimate the AM models, i.e. models are larger than the original structures. They also show that the triangulation resolution and the segmentation threshold are critical factors, and that the errors are concentrated at regions with high curvatures. Errors could be reduced choosing better triangulation and printing resolutions, but there is an important need for modifying some of the standard building processes, particularly the segmentation algorithms.
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Jose Miguel
authors: JM
authors: Pinto
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Cristobal
authors: C
authors: Arrieta
authors: Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Radiology Department, School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Marcelo E
authors: ME
authors: Andia
authors: Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Radiology Department, School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Sergio
authors: S
authors: Uribe
authors: Department of Mechanical and Metallurgical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Jorge
authors: J
authors: Ramos-Grez
authors: Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Alex
authors: A
authors: Vargas
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors: Pablo
authors: P
authors: Irarrazaval
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Biomedical Imaging Center, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Electronic address: ctejos@puc.cl.
authors: Cristian
authors: C
authors: Tejos
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D050278:Finger Phalanges / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
keywords: Additive manufacturing; Geometric accuracy; Image processing