Biomimetic Rod-and-Plate Modeling for Bone Tissue Engineering

Abstract Bone tissues can be regarded as natural smart materials, capable of adapting to specific loading conditions through active remodeling processes, leading to micro-scale architectures characterized by optimized arrangements of rods and plates. The main goal of the proposed study was to create a parametric CAD workflow based on implicit surface modeling and signed distance fields, capable of generating in a stable way biomimetic rod-and-plate bone microarchitectures. Based on our trials, this methodology represents a viable approach for generating such complex and truly biomimetic models, thus enabling advanced simulation-based optimizations and customized scaffold design for regenerative medicine applications. The principal achievements of this work were: a) full control of porosity and stiffness through input parameters; b) generation of highly biomimicking double-curvature surfaces by means of smoothing techniques; c) embedding of model anisotropy; d) mechanical characterization of the generated models via FEM and CFD simulations; e) validation of the procedure on different real human bone configurations; f) discussion about further improvements and curvature-based porous implant design. The adopted workflow has proven to be robust and versatile, as it can effectively reproduce key morphological and structural features of a wide range of real bone microarchitectures, considering measured morphometric and biomechanical data as reference. The proposed biomimetic approach shows significant potential for biomedical research and, in particular, can be regarded as a valuable tool for the design of optimized biomimetic scaffolds, suitably customized for precise regenerative medicine.