A FAHP-FTOPSIS approach for bioprinter selection

• Published in: Health and technology Vol. 10; no. 6; pp. 1455 - 1467
• Main Authors: Chen, Tin-Chih Toly, Lin, Yu-Cheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analytic hierarchy process; Biological and Medical Physics; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Biomedicine; Biophysics; Computational Biology/Bioinformatics; Computer Based Medical Systems; Decision analysis; Decision making; Engineering; Fuzzy sets; Knowledge management; Linguistics; Literature reviews; Medicine/Public Health; Original Paper; Performance evaluation; Printers; R & D/Technology Policy; Bioprinting; Fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution; Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process
• ISSN: 2190-7188; 2190-7196
• DOI: 10.1007/s12553-020-00469-8

Bioprinting has been applied to fabricate biomedical parts such as skin, scaffolds, tissues, and muscles. However, most previous studies in this field compared the advantages and/or disadvantages of a bioprinter subjectively. A systematic and objective method for comparing various bioprinters, so as to recommend the most suitable one to a decision maker, is lacking. To address this issue, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) approach is proposed in this study. In the proposed FAHP-FTOPSIS approach, FAHP is applied to derive the fuzzy weights of factors critical to the suitability of a bioprinter, based on a decision maker’s subjective judgments. Subsequently, the derived fuzzy weights are fed into the FTOPSIS approach to evaluate the overall performance of a bioprinter. The FAHP-FTOPSIS approach has been successfully applied to the case of making a choice from nine bioprinters. Parametric analyses have also been conducted to show the robustness of the proposed methodology.