Method of designing and manufacturing a customized hand prosthesis

A method for designing and manufacturing a customized hand prosthesis with one or more fingers, including the following steps:

• (i) patient profiling by means of:
• (i1) kinematic analysis of trajectories of the finger(s) of the healthy hand contralateral to the one to be prosthesised;
• and (i2) three-dimensional scan of the healthy contralateral hand;
• (ii) computer-executed kinematic synthesis of a joint and link configuration of the prosthesis, based, for each finger, on a topologically virtual mechanism model identical for each subject and for each finger, which mechanism model comprises 6 links and 7 rotative joints, each one of the latter with 1 degree of freedom, wherein a kinematic chain with 3 links and 3 joints mimics the finger, while other 3 links and 4 joints perform kinematic coupling functions;
• said kinematic synthesis step being performed by means of an optimization algorithm which receives as input anthropometric data and flexion-extension angles of the subject's finger joints acquired in said step (i) and outputs a virtual mechanism configuration selected by minimizing the difference between trajectories of virtual joints and trajectories measured in said step (i);
• and
• (iii) manufacturing of the hand prosthesis according to the virtual mechanism configuration of said step (ii), by means of additive manufacturing, in particular 3D printing.