AI designs bespoke 3D-printed prosthetic eyes

Artificial intelligence-designed and 3D-printed prosthetic eyes require 80% less human expert time compared to traditional manufacturing methods, potentially benefiting more people. A small trial also showed that this method can produce a suitable prosthetic limb in most cases.

Taking the UK as an example, About one in 1,000 people wears prosthetic eyes, which requires a trained ophthalmologist to make a mold of the eye socket. Many people who wear these types of prostheses also have orbital implants inserted to replace lost eyeball volume and create a surface to which muscles can reattach, allowing for natural eye movement. The prosthesis sits on top of it to provide a natural look.

The standard process of making a prosthetic limb takes about eight hours, but now, John Reinhard Dr. and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Darmstadt, Germany, have developed a method to automatically design and 3D print implants that both fit the wearer’s eye socket and aesthetically match any remaining eyes.

“Having an optical scan is more comfortable than having someone pour an alginate (mold-making material) impression into the eye socket, especially for children, who can seem tricky to get (to sit through) the procedure,” Reinhard said .

In the new process, an optical coherence tomography scanner uses light to create a 3D model of a person’s missing eye, so the back of the prosthesis can be designed to fit snugly. Color images are also taken of the remaining eyes for aesthetic matching.

This data is fed into an artificial intelligence model, which then creates a design that is 3D printed by a machine at a resolution of 18 billion droplets per cubic centimeter.

Once the prosthesis is printed, a human ophthalmologist can polish and adjust it to fit perfectly, a task that takes only 20% of the time of existing processes.

In a trial of 10 people at London’s Moorfield Eye Hospital, only two people’s prostheses didn’t fit. Neither has orbital implants, which Reinhard said was a problem for both the scanner and the AI ​​designers.

The team hopes to improve the process to significantly reduce the cost of making convincing prosthetics and make them accessible to more people. But Reinhard says it’s unlikely that future prosthetics will be made without human experts.

“We think of this as a tool for ophthalmologists,” he said. “So this isn’t about replacing ophthalmologists, but it’s a new process that they can use that we think provides a better output in terms of appearance.”