Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 21.1
Schematic
presentation of Ink-jet
printing
Fig. 21.2
Thermal Ink-jet printing: Schematic of bioprinting cartilage with simultaneous photo-
polymerization process
Introduction
Organ printing refers to the placement of various cell types into a soft scaffold fab-
ricated according to a computer-aided design template using a single device [
1
-
3
].
Computer aided scaffold topology design has recently gained attention as a viable
option to achieve function and mass transport requirements within tissue engineer-
ing scaffolds [
4
-
7
]. An exciting advance is that of simultaneous printing of cells and
biomaterials, which allows precise placement of cells and proteins within 3-D
hydrogel structures. This advance raises the possibility of spatially controlling not
only the scaffold structure, but also the type of tissue that can be grown within the
