Heterogeneous porous scaffold generation using trivariate B-spline solids and triply periodic minimal surfaces

Abstract

A porous scaffold is a three-dimensional network structure composed of a large number of pores, and triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMSs) are one of the conventional tools for designing porous scaffolds. However, discontinuity, incompleteness, and high storage space requirements are the three main shortcomings of porous scaffold design using TPMSs. In this study, we developed an effective method for heterogeneous porous scaffold generation to overcome the abovementioned shortcomings of porous scaffold design. The input of the proposed method is a trivariate B-spline solid with a cubic parametric domain. The proposed method first constructs a threshold distribution field (TDF) in the cubic parametric domain, and then produces a continuous and complete TPMS within it. Finally, by mapping the TPMS in the parametric domain to the trivariate B-spline solid, a continuous and complete porous scaffold is generated. Moreover, we defined a new storage space-saving file format based on the TDF to store porous scaffolds. The experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the method using a trivariate B-spline solid, as well as the superior space-saving of the proposed storage format.