Abstract
Bioprinting technology has a great potential in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In tissue engineering, for a bioprinted tissue to be successful in supporting regeneration of new tissue, it should morphologically mimic the native tissue in vivo. Therefore, the bioprinted tissue needs to be dimensionally accurate. In extrusion-based bioprinting, 3D printing process parameters and bioink properties affect dimensional accuracy of printed constructs. Currently, little information is available on effects of bioink composition and printing direction on dimensional accuracy of 3D printed constructs using alginate:methylcelluolose based bioink. In this study, strands were printed using four compositions of alginate:methylcellulose bioink and two printing directions. The four compositions of alginate:methylcellulose bioink were 1:1.5, 1:2, 1:2.5 and 1:3, and the two printing directions were vertical and horizontal. The statistical analysis of strand width measurement data revealed that while bioink composition has significant effect, printing direction does not affect the strand width of 3D printed constructs at the significance level of 0.05.
