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In the last decade, the number of corona bypass surgeries has more than doubled. This book presents a new approach for the development of suitable blood vessel substitutes out of photopolymer formulations which can be printed by rapid prototyping that offers the possibility to create cellular structures within the grafts which serve a suitable surface for the ingrowth of tissue. To meet the high medical requirements for artificial graft materials it is necessary to design special resin formulations. Beside the mechanical properties the biocompatibility plays a central role. Biocompatibility (above all the cell adhesion and proliferation) is mainly determined by the reactive diluents (main component of a formulation) and special co-monomers while degradation behavior predominately depends on the crosslinking agents. The mechanical properties which should be similar to natural blood vessels are adjusted by the ratio of crosslinking agents and diluents and in the case of hydrogels the percentage of water. This book is addressed to researchers of the interdisciplinary field of tissue engineering, especially to material scientists and developers of new biomaterials.

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Stefan Baudis, Dipl.-Ing. (MSc): Studies of Technical Chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology. Research associate at the Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology.

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