3D Bio-printing of Patient Specific Blood Vessels and Perfusion based Bioreactor to Investigate Endothelial Cell Survival

Shukla, Amit Kumar and Rath, Subha Narayan (2018) 3D Bio-printing of Patient Specific Blood Vessels and Perfusion based Bioreactor to Investigate Endothelial Cell Survival. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

Coronary artery disease is among the fetal disease affecting most individuals across the globe. It occurs when the coronary arteries are clogged by either clot or any substance that will lead to constriction of the lumen hence leading to stenosis. As such, patients with severe stenosis are required to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting surgery to enable efficient flow of blood to region supplied by the affected coronary artery. Coronary artery bypass surgery is an open chest operation that involves connecting the aorta to coronary artery after removal of the stenos using an artery or vein from another part of the body. It is preferred that a prosthetic artery be used in the operation so as to avoid the complications that may result from the use of natural blood vessels. However, the use of a prosthetic artery has been associated with several cases of thrombus formation, poor cell growth, poor proliferations and poor adhesion. Moreover, the prosthetic artery fabrication to mimic the natural blood vessels has been reported to a challenge hence increasing chances of rejection. The purpose of this paper is to give a detailed analysis of artificial blood vessels manufacturing using techniques such as additive manufacturing (3D printing). In this thesis, multiple methods that convert vessels to 3D-printable models are presented. Depending on the available information, vessels can be converted to tubes with a user specified fixed diameter, to tubes that adapt their diameter to the vessel’s one, or get turned into 3D-printable models voxel-wise from segmented data. For tube conversion, the user is provided with the ability to choose wall thickness and number of sides the approximated tube should have. If there is no radii information available, an arbitrary inner radius can be used as well. Five physical models of vessels were created and are compared to their digital representations. Although only general purpose printers and materials were used, the steady advances in this emerging field allow that these economically priced prints can already prove helpful in the aforementioned use-cases.

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