Simulation of Bone Remodelling and Bone Ingrowth within Scaffolds

Abstract

Bone Tissue Engineering is a fast growing interdisciplinary branch of research that aims to find adequate replacements or scaffolds for bone, in order to improve its ability to regenerate itself. The present work summarizes the most relevant functional properties of bone and its ability of adaptation, remarking the most crucial characteristics that these replacements must fulfill for appropriate bone regeneration, including the correct selection of the material and structure. The second part presents current trends in computational modeling of bone remodeling and bone ingrowth within scaffolds, with special emphasis on the description of two different mathematical approaches to model these biological regenerative events. We demonstrate that computational modeling is a useful tool for bone scaffold design that allows considering multiple factors some of them very difficult to evaluate experimentally.