PSI - Issue 49

Sotiris Korossis et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 49 (2023) 1–2 S. Korossis & V. Silberschmidt/ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2023) 000 – 000

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solutions and care for the individual patient, moving away from the currently dominant one-size-fits-all or even stratified medicine approaches, but also to generate important multiscale model systems to interrogate biological processes in health and disease, and predict the postoperative performance of medical devices prior to their clinical application in the individual patient, without relying on animal testing. This special issue features a cohort of studies that were presented in the 2 nd International Conference on Medical Devices: Materials, Mechanics and Manufacturing (ICMD3M 2023) in Corfu, Greece, and were focused on the development of underpinning technologies for the manufacturing and assessment of a number of different medical devices, ranging from stents and tissue engineering scaffolds to catheters, microfluidic devices and orthotic systems. Most of the featured studies were based on computational and/or in vitro simulations, whilst the manufacturing approaches investigated included additive manufacturing and biofabrication. Specifically, Zhang et al. reported on the development of computational fluid dynamics models for assessing the performance of 3D printed tissue scaffolds within a perfusion bioreactor, whilst Elenskaya et al. modelled the degradation process in TPMS-based polymer PLA scaffolds. Moreover, Moetazedian et al. reported on a novel biofabrication process that was based on microfluidics, Ahmed et al. utilised extrusion additive manufacturing to design and classify compliant geometries in orthotics systems, while Fazzini et al. correlated metal fused filament fabrication parameters and material properties of sintered 17-4PH stainless steel. Mechanical testing of 3D-printed devices was discussed by Marinopoulos et al., using a transtibial prosthetic socket as an example. Patient-specific computational simulations were reported by Ramella et al., Bates et al. and McLennan et al. for planning thoracic endovascular aortic repair, designing cardiac procedures, and assessing the impact of calcification stress during endovascular aortic aneurysm repair, respectively. Using a hybrid in silico/in vitro approach, Stratakos et al. reported on coating transfer in drug-coated balloon angioplasty, while Bridio et al. presented a novel methodology for modelling catheter aspiration in high-fidelity thrombectomy simulations. Finally, Cao et al. developed numerical models for analysis of the high-temperature behaviour of magnesium-hydroxyapatite metal matrix composites. This collection of studies clearly demonstrates the diversity of approaches and the complementarity of methods that underpin the development of medical devices. As the field moves into the era of more personalised solutions for tissue/organ repair/replacement and patient care and rehabilitation, biofabrication, underpinned by computational simulations and additive manufacturing, is poised to generate truly smart devices, with enhanced function and durability, reducing the need for costly revisions and ultimately improving patient experience and therapy.