Development of parietal bone surrogates for parietal graft lift training

Currently the surgical training of parietal bone graft techniques is performed on patients or specimens. Commercially available bone models do not deliver realistic haptic feedback. Thus customized parietal skull surrogates were developed for surgical training purposes. Two human parietal bones were used as reference. Based on the measurement of insertion forces of drilling, milling and saw procedures suitable material compositions for molding cortical and cancellous calvarial layers were found. Artificial skull caps were manufactured and tested. Additionally microtomograpy images of human and artificial parietal bones were performed to analyze outer table and diploe thicknesses. Significant differences between human and artificial skulls were not detected with the mechanical procedures tested. Highly significant differences were found for the diploe thickness values. In conclusion, an artificial bone has been created, mimicking the properties of human parietal bone thus being suitable for tabula externa graft lift training.