EAGER/Cybermanufacturing: Smart Manufacturing Platform for Tissue Engineering

器官衰竭和组织损伤是主要的健康问题。目前的器官移植治疗是不够的，因为可用的供体器官短缺，导致等待时间长。一个有前途的替代方案是组织工程，它试图创造功能组织，以取代或修复受损组织使用生物材料替代品（支架）。支架具有严格的设计要求，例如三维（3D）内部多孔结构、患者特异性几何形状以及适当的材料和机械性能，以促进功能性活组织的生长。目前的支架制造方法通常采用试错法，该方法没有考虑设计、材料和工艺之间的全面相互作用，导致支架具有不可预测的特性。这个早期概念探索性研究资助（EAGER）项目的目标是开发一个智能系统来指导形状，材料和工艺参数的优化，从而产生用于设计和制造3D支架的智能决策矩阵。本项目的目标是研究一个基于SOA（面向服务的架构）的集成技术和社会网络平台，使产品（3D多孔支架），工艺（熔融沉积建模-FDM）和材料（热塑性聚己内酯-PCL）领域之间的有效的人与人的协作和沟通。这个智能平台由语义网技术和社会网络分析支持，嵌入了设计和制造解决方案的智能配置能力，从而促进了信息和知识的重用和成本降低。虽然这项工作的重点是使用FDM工艺的多孔PCL支架，但知识驱动的智能平台可以扩展到其他生物制造方法。

Organ failure and tissue damage are major health problems. The current therapy of organ transplantation is inadequate because of the shortage of available donor organs, resulting in long waiting times. A promising alternative is tissue engineering, which seeks to create functional tissues to replace or repair damaged tissues using biomaterial-substitutes (scaffolds). Scaffolds have stringent design requirements, such a three-dimensional (3D) internal-porous structure, patient-specific geometry, and appropriate materials and mechanical properties to encourage the growth of functional living tissues. Current scaffold manufacturing methods typically adopt a trial-and-error approach, which does not consider comprehensive interactions among design, material and process and results in scaffolds with unpredictable properties. The goal of this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project is to develop an intelligent system to guide the optimization of shape, materials and process parameters, resulting in a smart decision matrix for designing and manufacturing 3D scaffolds. The objective of this project is to research an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) based integrated technical and social networking platform that enables effective human-human collaboration and communication among the domains of product (3D porous scaffold), process (Fused Deposition Modelling-FDM) and material (thermoplastic polycaprolactone-PCL). This smart platform, enabled by semantic web technology and social network analysis, embeds the capability of intelligent configurations of design and manufacturing solutions; therefore promoting information and knowledge reuse and cost reduction. Although the focus of this work is on porous PCL scaffolds using the FDM process, the knowledge-driven, smart platform can be extended to other biomanufacturing methods.