Medical Imaging-Aided Design of Personalized Devices - Advanced Design and Manufacturing Technologies for Biomedical Devices - page 83

aspect of human skin, as well as in activities involving human recognition. It also
has potential applications in veterinary medicine and zoology.
In terms of the rapid manufacture of complex surface microtextures, previous
research has helped to validate the use of conventional rapid prototyping tech-
nologies to obtain biomimetic surface details on the order of 0.4-4 mm (Díaz
Lantada et al. 2010a ). Other manufacturing processes based on copying biological
structures by using physical or chemical vapor-deposition methods to produce
micro-scaffolds have attained details on a scale of tens of microns (Lakhtakia
et al. 2009 ; Pulsifer et al. 2010 ).
In any case, there are multiple computer-aided manufacturing techniques that
can utilize the information in CAD fi les to produce objects with biomimetic micro-
textures using multiple materials. A brief comparison of those technologies is
included in Chaps. 10 and 11 .
A similar method, based on processing high-resolution photographs, can be
applied to a multitude of other biological organisms to mimic surface textures with
which to achieve special visual or contact phenomena effects and apply them to
surfaces on consumer products, as already employed by fabrics based on the mor-
phology of shark skin (Speedo Fastskin), surfaces of components based on dolphin
skin (Pavlov 2006 ), paints and lacquers that aid in achieving self-cleaning surfaces
and based on the surface of lotus fl ower leaves (Barthlott and Neinhuis 1997 ), and
other applications.
The method can also be carried out starting directly from SEM images of the
surfaces of different animals and plants, depending on the desired degree of preci-
sion and without needing complex and expensive technologies (sometimes also
needing specifi c installations and protected laboratories) such as nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR) and computed tomography (CT), whose application fi elds and
levels of detail attainable are also discussed in next sections, providing also a couple
of case studies.
This proposal also has applications in the fi eld of tissue engineering, since it can
aid in producing CAD fi les with geometries that imitate the surface characteristics
of different fabrics for subsequent simulation of their behavior with the aid of
FEM-CFD software, as has already been done with certain biomimetic surfaces
(Pavlov 2006 ). It should prove interesting to use this type of fi le to assess the
response | of tissues with different designs in terms of their surface texture and the
response of different fl uids so as to analyze their hydrophobic and impermeability
characteristics.
Regarding the reproduction of biological structures, the proposed design method,
with the help of high-precision additive manufacturing technologies, may well be
an important complement to current bioreplication techniques, such as sol-gel,
atomic layer deposition, PVD/CVD, or imprint lithography and casting, for several
industrial applications ( Pulsifi er and Lakhtakia 2011 ). For large series of parts, soft-
lithographic approaches and micro-replication techniques, such as micro hot-
embossing and microinjection molding, may also be good choices (see Chaps. 11
and 12 ) .