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CRANIAL REMOULDING ORTHOSIS DEVELOPMENT

Partner - Invent Medical Group s.r.o. (IMG)

medical equipment and technology

In some newborns, particularly those born prematurely, skull deformities may occur in the first few months of their life. The standard medical treatment in these cases includes using plastic cranial orthoses. Apart from being relatively heavy, unattractive, and airtight, these orthoses need to be adjusted during the treatment so as to “grow” along with a child‘s head. These adjustments, as well as the initial production, are enormously time-consuming, and uncomfortable for paediatric patients. Invent Medical Group s.r.o. is a start-up company involved in the design and production of cranial orthoses using 3D printing technology. These orthoses are geometrically and functionally very complex, and their development is currently dependent on the experience of designers and health professionals. The cooperation between IT4Innovations and IMG aims to automate many of these manual procedures making the whole process simpler and faster.

Within the contract research projects, we focus on developing algorithms for automatic adjustment of cranial orthoses, application of optimization algorithms for finding the optimal head shape, and the use of numerical modeling methods for determining the orthosis stiffness. To guarantee the full functionality of orthoses it is necessary to determine their stiffness accurately, as this property critically affects the growth of a child‘s head to its desired shape. This stiffness is currently tested in the IMG laboratory using special devices. Testing must be performed for every new type of cranial orthosis, which makes its design considerably time-consuming and financially intensive. Within the cooperation between IT4Innovations and IMG, the laboratory experimental testing of orthoses has been replaced by numerical modeling methods using a supercomputer. The geometric model developed by the designers is automatically converted into a numerical model, which allows the orthosis deformation to be calculated for the required load. Based on these calculations, the final design is adjusted to fulfill the stiffness requirements, and the individual designs might also be compared.

Partner's note

Our cooperation with IT4Innovations is highly beneficial for our company. We are confident when we say that our field – custom-made orthotics and prosthetics – will not evade the emerging technology trends, among which the most important ones for us are digitalization and automation of the design and production processes. With IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, we are working on several projects – automation and optimization of CAD processes, computer simulation of stress-strain states, and development of custom-made software for clinical applications. At the very beginning, we really clicked with IT4I – we are happy to be cooperating with this top-notch institution, which not only has an excellent technical background but also a team of genuine and keen experts. We believe that thanks to the new solutions developed within our cooperation with IT4Innovations our company is likely to become a global leader in the digitalization era of custom-made orthotics and prosthetics. We really appreciate the colleagues from IT4Innovations and those who made the foundation and development of this institution possible.

Jiří Rosický

Invent Medical Group s.r.o.