Artificial Intelligence creates personalized 3D printed prosthetic eyes

Prosthetic eyes designed with artificial intelligence and 3D printing could benefit more people by requiring 80% less time for human experts compared to traditional manufacturing methods. Small trials also suggest that this approach leads to adequate prostheses in most cases.

For example, in the UK, Approximately 1 in 1,000 people wears a prosthetic eye., it takes a highly trained ophthalmologist to take an impression of the eye socket. Many people wearing such prostheses also have orbital implants that replace lost eye volume and create a surface to which muscles can be reattached, allowing natural eye movement. Masu. A prosthesis is placed over this to give it a natural appearance.

The standard process for making a prosthetic limb takes about eight hours; Johan Reinhardt Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Darmstadt, Germany, have developed a method to automatically design and 3D print an implant that fits into a wearer's eye socket and aesthetically matches the remaining eye. .

“It's more comfortable to do an optical scan than to have someone pour this alginate.” [mould-making material] It seems difficult to make an impression on the eye socket, especially for children. [sit through] This is the procedure,” Reinhardt said.

In the new process, an optical coherence tomography scanner uses light to create a 3D model of a person's missing eye, so the back of the prosthesis can be designed to fit snugly. A color image of the remaining eye is also taken to ensure an aesthetic match.

The data is collected into an AI model, a design is created, and then 3D printed on a machine that can operate at a resolution of 18 billion droplets per cubic centimeter.

Once the prosthesis is printed, a human eye doctor can polish and adjust it for the perfect fit. This task takes only 20% of the time of the existing process.

In a trial of 10 people at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, only two people found these prostheses did not fit properly. Neither has orbital implants, which Reinhardt says poses problems for scanners and AI designers.

The team hopes to improve the process to significantly reduce the cost required to create convincing prosthetics and make them available to more people. However, Reinhardt says it is unlikely that future prosthetics will be created without human experts.

“We think of this like a tool for ophthalmologists,” he says. “So this is not going to replace an eye doctor, but it's a new process that they can use, and we think it's going to give them better results in terms of appearance.”