Smart personalized implants

Our goal is to develop and test clinically relevant patient-specific metamaterial implants with reduced stress-shielding effect, which will improve the health and quality of life of head-and-neck cancer patients.

Workflow

1 / Can metamaterial parts in mandibular implants reduce stress shielding in the presence of screws?

Our answer is Yes! We set up photoelasticity experiments to show that metamaterial designs transmit more stresses into adjacent bones than their solid counterparts, under the same geometric and fixation conditions. More details can be found in this work: Heins, J. I., Merema, B. B., Kraeima, J., Witjes, M. J., & Krushynska, A. O. (2025). Mandibular Implants: A Metamaterial‐Based Approach to Reducing Stress Shielding. Advanced Healthcare Materials, 14(13), 2500405 (link).

2 / Why photoelasticity tests for metamaterial implant and how does it work?

The answers to these questions can be found here: Heins, J. I., Merema, B. J., Kraeima, J., Witjes, M. J. H., & Krushynska, A. O. (2025). Stress shielding mitigation by metamaterial implants: Photoelasticity test of clinically relevant designs. Biophysics Reviews, 6(3) (link).

3 / How to estimate the mechanical response of bones for each patient?

Interesting question! We believe that the bone mechanics is correlated with patient's bite force. The bite force depends on multiple parameters, and this study provides the model to estimate this force: Heins, J. I., Gareb, B., Ten Brink, R., Vosselman, N., Halmos, G. B., Krushynska, A. O., ... & Witjes, M. J. (2025). Predictive bite force modelling of head and neck oncology patients for clinical mandibular reconstruction applications. Clinical Oral Investigations, 29(11), 1-9 (link).