Modeling of multifunctional deformable porous scaffolds for soft tissue engineering

Porous membranes/scaffolds such as guided tissue regeneration (GTR) membranes, cell sheets, tissue matrices or polymeric meshes are being widely used in soft tissue engineering to regenerate damaged, diseased tissue or wound. These membranes are mostly regular porous structures with repeating internal architecture. When they are applied onto wound area, various forces caused by bandage, contraction and self weight might cause deformation. As a result, the geometry and the designed porosity changes which eventually alters the desired choreographed functionality. To avoid the negative effect cause by such deformation and its associated consequences, a novel design methodology has been proposed to determine and include the resultant deformation. The proposed design will minimize the variation in effective porosity while ensuring its surface conformity. Thus the proposed design will provide a better functionality by providing both structural integrity and proper biological properties. The proposed methodology has been implemented and results will be shown with illustrative examples. Also a comparison study showing effective porosity for both the proposed method and conventional regular porosity will be presented for a free-form surface mimicking a wound.