Autostent: a semi-automated approach to designing customized 3D-printed oral radiation stents for patients with head and neck cancer.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Oral stents may reduce toxicities during radiation therapy for head and neck cancer (HNC). Customized 3D-printed oral stents offer faster production and achieve comparable patient-reported outcomes to conventionally fabricated stents. However, their design process remains time-consuming, lacks standardization, and relies heavily on skilled technicians. We hypothesized that semi-automating the design process for 3D-printed, mouth-opening, tongue-depressing (MOTD) stents could standardize the design workflow and decrease design time.

Methods

Using oral stent design principles established over decades by oral oncologists, we created a customized computer program (Autostent) using MATLAB to semi-automate the design process of MOTD stents. We subsequently compared Auto

SUBMITTER: Agrawal A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12625475 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature