## 2 Materials and Methods
### Additive Manufacturing of the Implant  
The computer-aided design (CAD) implant in the STL format was used to configure pre-processing parameters of AM using Materialise Magics (22.0, Materialise, Leuven, Belgium) software. During the pre-processing phase, four replicas of the implant were placed on the platform in the build chamber. The implants were oriented to create support structures for an adequate heat sink. Further, they were sliced to create contours including a laser hatch pattern and vector scanning for selectively melting the layers.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{3}{*}{**Input**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**MSCT-Siemens**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Somatom**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Definition Edge System Parameters**} \\ \cline{2-10}  & **Protocol** [No.] & **Reconstruction** & **Image** & **Tickness** & **Cuts** [**No.] & **Voxel** & **Pixels** & **Field of View** [**cm** \(\times\) **cm**] & **Voltage** [**kV**] & **Current** [**ImAl**] \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{\
\begin{tabular}{c} SD \\ head \\ \end{tabular} } & 1 & J30S & 0.5 & 870 & \multirow{3}{*}{0.625} & 512 \(\times\) 512 \(\times\) 870 & & \multirow{3}{*}{32 \(\times\) 43.5} & \multirow{3}{*}{180.00} \\ \cline{2-10}  & 2 & J70H & & & & & & 57.00 \\ \cline{2-10}  & 3 & J30S & & & & & & & 57.00 \\ \cline{2-10}  & 4 & J70H & & & & & & & 41.00 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} Phantom \\ \end{tabular} } & 1 & J30S & 0.5 & 364 & \multirow{3}{*}{0.488} & 0.488 & 512 \(\times\) 512 \(\times\) 364 & & \multirow{3}{*}{180.00} \\ \cline{2-10}  & 2 & J70H & & & & & & & 180.00 \\ \cline{2-10}  & 3 & J30S & & & & & & & 43.00 \\ \cline{2-10}  & 4 & J70S & & & & & & & 54.00 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Parameters of multi-slice computed tomography (MST) imaging for the sus domesticus (SD) head and the Phantom.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Description**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Thresholding Values [HU]**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Resolution**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Decimate**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Smooth**} \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{5-6}  & **1** & **2** & **3** & & **Resolution** & **Iteration** \\ \hline SD head & 250 & 300 & 500 & Normal & 0.50 & 20 \\ \hline Phantom & 0 & \(-\)300 & \(-\)500 & Normal & 0.50 & 20 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Three-dimensional (3D) thresholding parameters for the SD head and the Phantom.  
The pre-processed data was used to initiate additive manufacturing, in particular for the titanium PBF using SLM Solutions 125 HL (SLM Solutions Group AG, Lubeck, Germany) machine. Table 3 lists the printing parameters, and Figure 2 illustrates the printing orientation, printing location, and support structures of the implants. Subsequently, the additively manufactured implants underwent heat treatment in an argon atmosphere for stress relief. During the heat treatment process, the temperature of the chamber was increased from 20 to 800 \({}^{\circ}\)C at a rate of 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C/min, it was held at 800 \({}^{\circ}\)C for four hours, and eventually, it was cooled to the room temperature at the same rate. The support structures of the implants were removed by an expert using manual instruments, i.e., pliers, a saw, and an angle grinder, to yield the end-use implants. Finally, one of the implants was scanned using the optical 3D coordinates measuring system to capture the resultant geometry, as presented in Figure 1.