According to this and advantages of design freedom by AM, interest in AM to make bespoke orthotics devices has grown in the last decade. Custom-made orthotics offer fit and comfort over off-the-shelf/mass-produced orthotics. AM is perfect to make well-designed/appealing lightweight bespoke products at no extra cost. Īdditive manufacturing (AM), more popularly known as 3D printing, is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data. Moreover, bespoke knee braces have been demonstrated to be more effective for knee osteoarthritis than off the shelf ones. These complaints are mainly due to the design and the fit of the knee brace, which could be solved with bespoke knee braces.
However, poor compliance to this treatment is observed because of lack of effectiveness, discomfort, bad fit, migration of the brace, bulkiness, poor aesthetics, skin irritation, blisters and too much pressure on the knee. This medical device aims to relieve pain and delay knee surgery by unloading the affected compartment of the knee. A knee brace is a non-pharmacological treatment for knee osteoarthritis recommended by Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI). Due to aging and increasing obesity, the prevalence of knee OA is expected to increase in developed countries in the next 20 years. Knee osteoarthritis has a world prevalence around 250 million people (3.8%), increasing with age. The knee is the second most affected joint by osteoarthritis. Low-cost scanners could be useful for clinicians because of the simple and fast process, but attention should be focused on accuracy, which depends on the scanned body segment.
In conclusion, 3D scanners provide more information about the shape of the lower limb, but the reliability depends on the 3D scanner and the size of the scanned segment. The low-cost scanner tended to overestimate the circumferences from 0.1% to 1.5%, overestimation being greater for smaller circumferences.
An overestimation of 2.5mm was found in high-level scanner compared to manual measurement, but with a better repeatability between measurements. 02) while the process time was nine times quicker with the low-cost scanner (p <.
The record time was 97s shorter with high-level scanner than with the low-cost (p =. Time to record and to process the three 3D scans for scanners methods were compared with Student t-test while Bland-Altman plots were used to study agreement between circumferences of each section from the three methods. The lower limbs were divided into 17 sections of 30mm each from 180mm above the mid-patella to 300mm below. We took two manual measurements and three 3D scans with each scanner from 14 lower limbs. The aim of this study is to look at the agreement between manual measurements, high-level and low-cost handheld 3D scanners. However, little information is available about scanners and 3D scans. This technology allows orthotics to be designed directly on digital scans of limbs. Use of additive manufacturing is growing rapidly in the orthotics field.