Quantitative Evaluation of Curved BioPrinted Constructs of an <i>in Situ</i> Robotic System Towards Treatment of Volumetric Muscle Loss

Tissue engineering techniques and particularly <i>in situ</i> bioprinting using handheld devices and robotic systems have recently demonstrated promising outcomes to address volumetric muscle loss injuries. Nevertheless, these approaches suffer from insufficient printing precision and/or lack of quantitative analysis of the thickness and uniformity of bioprinted constructs (BPCs) - which are critical for ensuring cell viability and growth. To address these limitations, in this study, we present a framework for robotic bioprinting and complementary vision-based algorithms to quantitatively analyze thickness and uniformity of BPCs with curved geometries. The performance of the proposed robotic bioprinting and complementary algorithms has been thoroughly evaluated using various simulation and experimental studies on BPCs with constant and variable thicknesses. The results clearly demonstrate the remarkable and accurate performance of the proposed method in calculating the thickness and its variations along the geometry of the BPCs.