Using methods of the reverse engineering to carry personalised preoperative stabilisers out on the example of vertebrae of human spine

Abstract

There is presented the possibility of using modern rapid prototyping methods in the form of reverse engineering on the example of lumbosacral spine of a human spine at the level of L3-L. Reverse engineering techniques were directly used in the generation and processing of point clouds from a real object. The point clouds were generated by using specialised Mimics software and basing on the results of computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging using. In the next stage of processing, there was the export of the appropriately converted point clouds to STL format, compatible with CAD programs. The reverse engineering process took four steps: digitisation of the real object, using non-invasive imaging techniques (CT, MRI), processing the point clouds from the digitisation stage, construction of a surface model of the real object basing on the processed point clouds, realising of the real object’s copy by using rapid prototyping techniques. In the final stage, the model of the complex spinal’s part was tested to MES strength analysis.