3D printing human tissues for medical, legal, and educational uses

Jacques Eric Timothy Zaneveld

Note: All models and images thereof were made by us

3D Printing -Additive Manufacturing

• 3D Printing works by depositing tiny layers of material

• Any shape can be made on the same machine

3D printing workflow: the hard part is getting a good computer model

Raw Data

Remove unwanted tissue

Raw model

Render in 3D

Final model Artist cleanup

3D printing

Physical model

Example project: Medical malpractice lawsuit

• Our client wanted an easily understood life sized model of a patient injury.

• The patient had a spinal chord constriction leading to him being paralyzed.

• We agreed to make models portraying the injury.

Raw Spine data - MRI

Bone was identified by hand

The low quality data (5mm slices) lead to a blocky model

A normal spine was fit to this data to generate the final model

The model was cut in half, showing the constriction

(below)

The constriction in the patient’s model was clearly visible.

Patient spine Healthy spine

The final print clearly shows the injury

These models are being used in an ongoing lawsuit

Each model was printed in two parts to allow easy viewing of both the interior and exterior.

Many designs, colors, and sizes of objects can be constructed

We can customize everything to client specifications

• Inputs:– Stacks of 2D images (dicom, .png, .bmp, etc)– Mesh files (.obj, .stl) – Matlab files / raw voxel data (.mat, .nii)– 3D modeling program outputs (.blend)

• Output:– Any size within 21cm X 21cm X 22cm– Any color (But only one color per piece)– Resolution: better than .06mm

Input / output possibilities

Ongoing projects:

• Printing patient brain lesions and tumors

• Making models of developing babies from ultrasound data

• Making scientific equipment

Thanks!!!

Please feel free to contact me:

Jacques Eric Timothy ZaneveldZaneveld@bcm.edu

(541) 760-1805