The Study Of Fabricating Process And Color Matching Technology Of Auricular Prostheses Based On CT Images Processing And Rapid Prototyping

In clinic, the whole auricular defects is a usually illness. Visage and audition are affected by the whole auricular defects. Surgery and auricular prostheses are two ways of repair of the whole auricular defects. The ear by surgery can not show the fine structure of one normal ear, and surgery is dangerous and extortionate and its period is long. Traditionally facial prosthesis has been made by way of hand worked sculpted wax pattern for many years, which is not advanced enough to meet the practical needs of emulation.Rapid Prototyping (RP) was rapidly developed and commercial in the eighties of the twentieth century. Prototype that is very complex of structure and high precision can be made with RP systems according to the 3D CAD model. With the development of the CT images processing technology and the 3D reconstruction method, 3D digital model of human apparatus with high precision and complicated profile was easily obtained. The best way of solving the problem of outer precision of auricular prostheses was provided by the CT images processing and Rapid Prototyping technology. Besides, the color matching of auricular prostheses is another difficult problem. Therefore, the research work in this paper focuses the two expects including outer precision and color matching of auricular prostheses.Firstly, the repair technics of auricular prostheses based on CT images processing and Rapid prototyping technology was studied. The spiral CT scanning data was dealt with by Mimics software that can transform CT images and fulfill 3D reconstruction, the three-dimensional data of normal ear was obtained, and a STL file was exported. Then, in order to improve the quality of the surface, the CAD model of ear was smoothed out using Magics software, the CAD model of auricular prostheses was mirrored with the normal ear data, the 3D mould model of auricular prostheses was obtained by Boolean operation. The prototypes of the ear and its mould, which can be used to cast the silicone material were fabricated by LOM and SLA, the prototypes and its mould have high precision and good surface quality. The cavity surface of mould was dealt by wax or soap water before it was used to cast the silicone. Through controlling the key parameters including vacuum pressure, the time of removing air bladder, the time of casting, the temperature and time of sulfuration, the auricular prostheses with good quality and high outer simulation grade was obtained. The research on the ear outer precision achieved satisfying results.