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REVIEW ARTICLE

Software for Bioprinting

Catherine Pakhomova *, Dmitry Popov , Eugenii Maltsev , Iskander Akhatov ,
1,2
1
1
1
Alexander Pasko 1,3
1 Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow
2 Institute of Engineering Physics for Biomedicine, NRNU Mephi, Moscow
3 The National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University, UK

Abstract: The bioprinting of heterogeneous organs is a crucial issue. To reach the complexity of such organs, there is a need for
highly specialized software that will meet all requirements such as accuracy, complexity, and others. The primary objective of
this review is to consider various software tools that are used in bioprinting and to reveal their capabilities. The sub-objective was
to consider different approaches for the model creation using these software tools. Related articles on this topic were analyzed.
Software tools are classified based on control tools, general computer-aided design (CAD) tools, tools to convert medical data
to CAD formats, and a few highly specialized research-project tools. Different geometry representations are considered, and
their advantages and disadvantages are considered applicable to heterogeneous volume modeling and bioprinting. The primary
factor for the analysis is suitability of the software for heterogeneous volume modeling and bioprinting or multimaterial three-
dimensional printing due to the commonality of these technologies. A shortage of specialized suitable software tools is revealed.
There is a need to develop a new application area such as computer science for bioprinting which can contribute significantly in
future research work.

Keywords: Bioprinting, Computer and mathematical modeling, Computer science for bioprinting, Digital biofabrication,
Function representation approach, Software

*Corresponding Author: Catherine Pakhomova, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow; catherine.pakhomova@skoltech.ru
Received: March 21, 2020; Accepted: April 24, 2020; Published Online: June 05, 2020

(This article belongs to the Special Section: Bioprinting in Russia)
Citation: Pakhomova C, Popov D, Maltsev E, et al., 2020, Software for Bioprinting, Int J Bioprint, 6(3): 279.
DOI: 10.18063/ijb.v6i3.279.

1 Introduction human organs is often vascularized and consists
of different tissues.
There are two research fields of bioprinting in a A full description of research and manufacturing
broad sense: Printing of living cells and printing fields of bioprinting is illustrated in Figure 1 [1-26] .
for purposes of a living organism. Printing of In the field of bioprinting, the printing of living
living cells includes printing of tissues or whole cells, including vascularized tissues, skin, bones,
organs for purposes of medicine, for example, and cartilages is the most widespread. There is
for surgery, pharmaceutical research and tests, also bioprinting of physiologically relevant tissues
transplantation, and others. The printing of for pharmaceutical research and development
multi-material or heterogeneous structures is therapy of cancer treatment. Furthermore, there is
the main issue in bioprinting nowadays. In the also bioprinting of complete living organs which
application of living cells printing, the main is the subject of active research and elaboration
issue is that the structure of the majority of nowadays. While another general field of

© 2020 Pakhomova, et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
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