Volumetric texture synthesis of bone micro-structure as a base for scaffold design

Bones consist of hierarchical biocomposite materials arranged in multi-scale structural geometry exhibiting complex behavior. This structure is vulnerable to various damaging factors that may cause its degradation, such as accidents, medical operations and diseases. Current technology cannot precisely reconstruct damaged bone tissue and can only roughly approximate such damaged structures. The aim of this research is to develop a method to identify the damaged regions and provide a best fitting scaffold to imitate the original structure, thus offering better rehabilitation. New imaging techniques at the micro-scale level are emerging. Imaging can already provide highly detailed micro-features of a bone sample or even a complete volumetric micro-structure of a bone. A three-dimensional model of the bone can then be reconstructed and analyzed. This study proposes a new method for applying volumetric texture synthesis that can adapt according to location, size and shape. Such 3D volumetric texture may be irregular, but can still imitate the textural behavior of its surroundings. The method has the ability to create a smooth and continuous structure according to topological and geometrical characteristics. Moreover, the texture captures the stochastic and porous nature of the bone micro-structure. In addition, the resulting texture is tested by applying mechanical analysis to the new synthesized structure, thus controlling the mechanical properties of the reconstructed bone. We believe our method will contribute to understanding bone structure and behavior and make it possible to customize the design and fabrication of scaffolds for bone micro-structures. Moreover, such scaffolds can facilitate the process of rehabilitating damaged bone.