For the first time in Russia: silicone heart model
The tale of how Prototypster printed the first 3D silicone model of a human heart in Russia
The first model of the heart, "grown" from silicone with the help of three-dimensional printing technology, will be able to make life much easier for resident surgeons, who to this day practice their skills on pig hearts. And although pig organs are close to human organs in many ways, the only argument in their favor is accessibility. The silicone heart, in turn, is a reusable simulator for conducting training operations. It allows you to make an incision, and then put a seam on it, and so on as many times as the surgeon's heart desires. Prototypster will tell you how we, the first in Russia, managed to make such a unique organ.
Medicine is one of the largest applications of 3D printing. Science is ahead of science fiction: now bones, skull implants, skin, blood vessels and even cancerous tumors are being printed.
All over the world, they have recently been trying to switch to simulators similar to our heart. In the UK, for example, Nottingham Trent University showed a heart printed from several types of silicone gel. And although three-dimensional printing is constantly getting cheaper and allows you to experiment more and more, making copies of human organs is still a difficult and unusual task.
Matters of the heartINNORTA, a developer of high-tech hardware and software complexes for restorative treatment, turned to us for the implementation of this project.
The first attempts to print a heart model from colored plaster were unsuccessful, so we started looking for another material.
The 3D model was created according to a tomographic image of a real human heart. On the basis of a three-dimensional model on a 3D printer, a master mold made of plastic was first made, and already using it we made a mold for casting from silicone. The possibility of maximum detail has become a decisive criterion when choosing the material for printing the master form. The most suitable in this case was the technology of laser sintering of polyamide (selective laser sintering), which makes it possible to make a thin-walled, but durable structure with excellent detail.
The first printed sample of a silicone heart had to be slightly modified manually, thickening some walls with plasticine.
Visual changes were then made to the model, which improved the final result. There is also a variant of printing the heart in parts – this technology is called rotary casting. Instead of a single model, we get models of several parts that simplify the creation of molds for casting. After printing, the parts of the product are glued into one and modified by removing the seams between them.
The first silicone prototype of the heart made it possible to understand the potential of Prototypster 3D printing in medicine. At the moment, we are developing drawings for a rotary heart manufacturing system. Silicone simulators are planned to be offered to clinics all over Russia for training future surgeons.
How to create a more accurate modelWorld experience shows that we have something to strive for: at the end of June this year, Spectrum Health specialists at the Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in western Michigan in the USA announced the successful introduction of general imaging methods for the production of a three-dimensional anatomical model of a patient's heart.
The integration of computed tomography (CT) and three-dimensional echocardiography (3DTEE) has been successfully applied to print a hybrid 3D model. To obtain the greatest accuracy and detail, experts have added another tool to them – magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The Spectrum Health team used specialized software to register the image using various methods. Computer and magnetic resonance imaging are tools for visualizing a 3D model. Three-dimensional echocardiography (3DTEE), as reported by Joseph Vetkattil, MD, made it possible to 3D-print a model for patients with congenital heart disease.
Each instrument has its own strengths that can improve the quality and increase the detail of 3D printing in general: CT accurately conveys the external anatomy of the heart, MRI surpasses other methods in measuring volumes, including the right and left ventricles, as well as heart muscle tissue, and three-dimensional echocardiography provides the best visualization of heart valves.
The new printing technology can be very useful for cardiologists and surgeons. The hybrid model will allow doctors to diagnose and treat heart diseases more successfully, including improving surgical planning. 3D models of patients' hearts will allow us to decide in which cases to use surgical intervention, and in which to do without it and treat with other known methods.
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02.09.2015