Automatic data-driven design and 3D printing of custom ocular prostheses

Millions of people require custom ocular prostheses due to eye loss or congenital defects. The current fully manual manufacturing processes used by highly skilled ocularists are time-consuming with varying quality. Additive manufacturing has the potential to simplify the manufacture of ocular prosthetics, but existing approaches largely replace craftsmanship with manual digital design and still require substantial expertise and time. Here we present an automatic, digital, end-to-end process for producing custom ocular prostheses using anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) data that considers both shape and appearance. A statistical shape model predicts a best-fitting prosthesis shape from incomplete socket surface information, while a colour-characterized image of the healthy fellow eye is used to procedurally generate the prosthesis appearance. Prostheses are manufactured using a multi-material full-colour 3D printer and post-processed to satisfy regulatory compliance. In 10 clinic patients who received a 3D-printed prosthesis, our approach reduced ocularist labour by a factor of five and produced reproducible output compared to a current manual process.

Johann Reinhard, Philipp Urban, Stephen Bell, David Carpenter, Mandeep S. Sagoo