Biomedical engineers at UNSW Sydney have their sights on developing anatomically accurate 3D printed models which mimic exactly the way body parts feel and move.
The ambitious plans come after researchers at the Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering (IHealthE) recently designed and created a patient-based anatomical 3D model of a young child's skull which helped surgeons devise and plan an innovative way of successfully removing a life-threatening tumour.
The team also created an exact replica of a specific patient's trachea (windpipe) to help clinicians determine whether a certain surgical procedure could be performed safely.
Now the team are considering ways to make future 3D prints even more useful for medical professionals, by developing the use of different printing materials that recreate the complex way body parts feel and move.
3D printing anatomically accurate patient-specific body parts
"What we have been doing is making patient-specific 3D printed models so that clinicians can practise specific surgery techniques unique to their patient," says Dr Keng-Yin Lai, a postdoctoral research fellow at UNSW who helped create the models.
"They are geometrically and anatomically accurate which is really useful. But I think the future in this space is using even more realistic materials during the 3D printing process and therefore understanding how parts of the body are actually going to bend and flex during surgeries." The first bespoke 3D printing project came about when Dr Catherine Banks and Dr Jacob Fairhall from Sydney Children's Hospital, part of the Randwick Hospitals Campus, approached the team at IHealthE to produce an exact replica of eight-year-old Issac Lee's skull. Issac had been diagnosed with a craniopharyngioma, a rare and complex tumour at the base of his brain, and had already undergone two major craniotomy surgeries that required part of his skull being temporarily removed.
Dr Banks and her team proposed a third, but this time less invasive, procedure via Issac's nose and requested a 3D printed model of his brain and the tumour be created from imaging scans. The model needed to show the precise size, shape and location of the tumour, but also other critical structures, such as the optic nerves, which had to be taken into consideration to ensure they were not damaged during the operation.
