Abstract
Porous titanium is a metallic biomaterial with good properties for the clinical repair of cortical bone tissue, although the presence of pores can compromise its mechanical behavior and clinical use. It is therefore necessary to characterize the implant pore size and distribution in a suitable way. In this work, we explore the new use of electrical impedance spectroscopy for the characterization and monitoring of titanium bone implants. Electrical impedance spectroscopy has been used as a non-invasive route to characterize the volumetric porosity percentage (30%, 40%, 50% and 60%) and the range of pore size (100–200 and 355–500 mm) of porous titanium samples obtained with the space-holder technique. Impedance spectroscopy is proved to be an appropriate technique to characterize the level of porosity of the titanium samples and pore size, in an affordable and non-invasive way. The technique could also be used in smart implants to detect changes in the service life of the material, such as the appearance of fractures, the adhesion of osteoblasts and bacteria, or the formation of bone tissue.
Highlights
Electrical impedance measurements have long been used in biomedical engineering [1], and they are receiving recent interest for a wide variety of applications, such as cardiovascular diagnosis [2], prostheses osseointegration assessment [3], wearable medical devices [4], or 3D image analysis for the detection of medical anomalies, such as cancer [5]
We explored the use of electrical impedance spectroscopy to characterize the porosity of titanium bone implants and their possible application in the monitoring of the implantation
We present in this work the use of electrical impedance as a method to characterize the porosity of the structure, in a non-invasive and affordable way, with the potential to create 3D maps of the implant
Summary
Electrical impedance measurements have long been used in biomedical engineering [1], and they are receiving recent interest for a wide variety of applications, such as cardiovascular diagnosis [2], prostheses osseointegration assessment [3], wearable medical devices [4], or 3D image analysis for the detection of medical anomalies, such as cancer [5].Clinical repair of bone tissue is a worldwide healthcare challenge, due to the rising incidence of ageing and related diseases, cancer, or traffic accidents, among other reasons [6]. Titanium has been commonly used in orthopedic prostheses due to its unique biomedical properties, such as high specific resistance, low weight, and its high corrosion resistance, but pure titanium is a material unable to properly emulate the mechanical requirements of the bone [7]. For this reason, porous materials have been developed to correct those problems that occurred in solid materials, offering better similarities in their values of Young’s modulus, closer to that of the human bone. The main techniques currently used for the creation of porous structures in biomaterials are the Sensors 2020, 20, 4358; doi:10.3390/s20164358 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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