Color reproduction for advanced manufacture of soft tissue prostheses

ObjectivesThe objectives of this study were to develop a color reproduction system in advanced manufacture technology for accurate and automatic processing of soft tissue prostheses.MethodsThe manufacturing protocol was defined to effectively and consistently produce soft tissue prostheses using a 3D printing system. Within this protocol printer color profiles were developed using a number of mathematical models for the proposed 3D color printing system based on 240 training colors. On this basis, the color reproduction system was established and their system errors including accuracy of color reproduction, performance of color repeatability and color gamut were evaluated using 14 known human skin shades.ResultsThe printer color profile developed using the third-order polynomial regression based on least-square fitting provided the best model performance. The results demonstrated that by using the proposed color reproduction system, 14 different skin colors could be reproduced and excellent color reproduction performance achieved. Evaluation of the system's color repeatability revealed a demonstrable system error and this highlighted the need for regular evaluation. The color gamut for the proposed 3D printing system was simulated and it was demonstrated that the vast majority of skin colors can be reproduced with the exception of extreme dark or light skin color shades.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that the proposed color reproduction system can be effectively used to reproduce a range of human skin colors for application in advanced manufacture of soft tissue prostheses.