Blogs

Giving the Dog a Bone With the Help of 3D Printing

There’s no denying that 3D printing has had a major impact on the healthcare industry, but it’s not just people who are benefiting. 3D printing is already helping veterinarians make major improvements in the healthcare treatment of our furry friends. 3D Printing Is Improving Animal Diagnosis 3D printing began as an expensive technology that only the top industries could make use of, but it’s quickly evolved into an affordable tool for a wide variety of applications, and in some case

3D Biomedical Printing - by Jacob M.

February 20, 2016

New 3D printing technology creates living body parts

Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, USA, have taken the next step towards printing living replacement parts for our bodies. In a study published in the February 15th edition of Nature Biotechnology, the scientists revealed the ITOP (Integrated Tissue-Organ Printer). This 3D printer, which has been in development for over 10 years, is able to form structured living tissue, including ears, bones and muscles, which look and function like the real thi

JJMonash

February 18, 2016

Scientists 3D Print Liver Tissue for Drug Screening

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego led a team in developing life-like liver tissue with the help of 3D printing. The model closely approximates a real human liver’s structure and function, and could be applied to drug screening and disease modeling research. The study was published in the February 8th edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers hope that the new liver will help save pharmaceutical companies time and resources, making

February 12, 2016

3D Printing Is Now Mainstream In Surgery

Many doctors these days are now including 3D printing as part of their many surgical procedures. Dr. Jamie Levine from NYU Langone noted that there is a paradigm shift when it comes to doing surgical procedure in terms of using and relying on 3D printing. A lot of hospitals all over the United States have already embraced 3D printing to create tools, models or craft tissues used for surgery. One of the hospitals that are leading the paradigm shift is the Institute for Reconstructive Plastic

February 5, 2016

3D Printing is Helping Scientists Unfold the Mysteries of the Human Brain

Harvard researchers have used 3D printing to create a replica of the human brain. Despite being arguably the most important organ in the human body, scientists still understand very little about the brain’s structure and how it works. Hypotheses abound, but there have been few opportunities to explore them until now. The Harvard researchers 3D-printed a gel brain to watch it grow, helping them make new inferences about how it develops its signature folds. The study could help solve t

February 5, 2016

Orthopedic Surgeon Creates 3D Printed Tools To Facilitate ACL Surgery

Surgery on the anterior crucial ligament (ACL) is difficult. The standard surgical procedure involves drilling a tunnel on the tibia to remove the ligament and reconstructing it by using transplanted graft. In most cases, the affected area that has been treated has a good chance of re-tearing after being repaired. However, this technique has many limitations such as entering the knee through the tibia can make it difficult to reattach the ligament to the original attachment point. Having sa

Desktop 3D Printing in Medical Imaging

February 3, 2016

3D Printing of Renal Mass from MRI Images

Every 3D printing case is different, and must be tailored for the individual patient’s specific clinical condition, anatomy, and imaging techniques. A 47 year old woman with a renal mass was being evaluated for surgical treatment planning. A urologist familiar with my current 3D printing work requested a 3D printed model of the kidney. The purpose was to help demonstrate the anatomy of the mass with respect to the renal hilum, to help determine if a partial nephrectomy was possible,

ebaumel

February 2, 2016

3D Printer Creates Acoustic Tweezers

Creating multicellular structures is a delicate procedure. For instance, the human heart is comprised of more than 2 billions of muscle cells that should be aligned and interact with one another to work properly. While 3D Bioprinting is a promising technology that allows scientists to create biological tissues, the problem remains—there is no single method available that uses a high level of precision to create multicellular structures that are functional, viable, and has good integrity. Res

January 30, 2016

3D Printed Pills are Making Medicine More Personalized

3D printing has made a major impact on the medical industry in a wide variety of ways — custom prosthetics, surgical implants, bioprinted tissue, and other areas. 3D printed pills are one of the newest advancements, already in development, which could help treat minor and major medical conditions, including epilepsy and chronic pain. Of course, non-3D printed medications are already available for most major ailments. But what makes 3D printed pills such a great advancement is that they

January 30, 2016

Toddler Receives Adult Kidney Transplant With 3D Printing

A kidney transplant is a very sensitive operation and patients need to be compatible so that the organ recipient will not reject the donor organ. 3D printing paved the way for surgeons to be able to transplant an adult kidney to a toddler recipient. In Northern Ireland, a 3-year old toddler is the first child in the world to survive a kidney transplant using adult kidneys. The toddler suffered from heart failure which had dire consequences on her kidneys as they were robbed of oxygen. Instea

January 28, 2016

Derby The Dog Gets A 3D-Printed Leg Upgrade

By this point, Derby is a well known character in the 3D-printing world. He became famous after getting a pair of 3D-printed legs last years so he could walk straight and sit like a regular dog. But soon it became time to design him a new pair. 3D Systems, a South Carolina-based company, created his first pair, and designed them to be close to the ground so Derby could get used to them without hurting himself falling down. Their initial plans were to upgrade him to a taller version of the o

January 22, 2016

3D-Printed Nose Changes a Teenager’s Life

Dallan Jennet, a 14-year-old boy, has become the first person to receive a 3D printed nose transplant in the US. Human nose reconstruction is a fairly common practice, but this is the first time US doctors were able to produce the body part in a way that made it fully functional. Jennet, who is from the Marshall Islands, suffered a face disfiguration after falling from a power line when he was 9 years old. Earlier this year he received several surgeries to improve his sense of taste and

January 16, 2016

Ourobotics Revolutionized A New 3D Bioprinter That Can Hold 10 Materials

3D bioprinters are able to print living tissues for medical transplants and testing to name a few. However, recreating human tissues require a combination of human cells, biogels as well as different types of bioink materials aside from the nutrients and oxygen needed by the cells to survive. Specialized 3D bioprinters do not come cheap and they can cost between $100,000 and a million dollars depending on their specifications. With the aim of developing an affordable 3D bioprinter, inventor

January 14, 2016

3D Printed Eyelids Featured In Collegiate Inventors Competition

3D printing is becoming an important feature in the field of medical science and its wide recognition in improving medical technology made it possible for many doctors all over the world to come up with innovations in treating their patients. Speaking of innovation, the Collegiate Inventors Competition encourages students to use 3D printing in redefining the way scientists use this technology. The recent competition was attended by 14 finalist teams from all over the United States. One of th

January 12, 2016

New 3D Printed Tool Changes the Game for ACL Reconstruction

ACL injuries are a big concern for high performance athletes — in the NFL alone, there are an average of 53 ACL injuries per year. In some cases, the injury requires surgical treatment and a lot of time off. For more severe injuries, it’s career-ending. But the ultimate consequences of injuries of the anterior cruciate ligaments is probably about to change, with the help of a new 3D printed surgical device that helps surgeons better reconstruct partial or full ACL tears and reduce the chance

January 8, 2016

Doctors May Soon 3D Print Micro Organs

For many, 3D printers seem like a fun tool to print plastic trinkets. But thanks to the unique properties of embryonic stem cells, the machines may one day be used by doctors to print micro-organs to save the lives of transplant patients. Embryonic stem cellls come from human embryos, and have the unique ability to develop into any type of cell the body needs, including brain tissue, organ cells, or bones. That’s why they have long been a research focus for regenerative medicine aimed at rep

December 29, 2015

3D Printing Creates Prosthetics That Are Now More Accessible To Poor Regions

3D printing technology is becoming mainstream in many first world countries. Unfortunately, poor countries are not able to benefit from this innovation. 3D printing is a technology that could have benefited many patients from poor countries especially those who are in need of quality prosthetics. London-based 3D printing company 3D LifePrints was able to provide 3D prosthetics to amputee patients from poor and developing countries. It was estimated that more than 15 million amputees from the poo

December 17, 2015

3D Printing Technology Helps Surgeons Do Cheek Reduction Surgery

Taiwanese surgeons have been using the 3D printing technology to perform complex surgical procedures in order to reduce the surgery time as well as its risks. One of the complex surgical procedures that 3D printing technology was used on is the complex orthognathic procedure which is a corrective jaw or cheek reduction surgery. Conventional surgery is an arduous task not only for the surgeons but also to the patients. In this case, patients who undergo facial skeletal surgery may develop

Learn to 3D Print: Basic Tools from software to printers

December 14, 2015

Navigating 3D Slicer 101: Basic Introduction to Slicer Software and Tutorial on Cropping DICOM Data

Getting from DICOM to 3D printable STL file in 3D Slicer is totally doable...but it is important to learn some fundamental skills in Slicer first if you are not familiar with the program. This tutorial introduces the user to some basic concepts in 3D Slicer and demonstrates how to crop DICOM data in anticipation of segmentation and 3D model creation. (Segmentation and STL file creation are explored in a companion tutorial ) This tutorial is downloadable as a PDF file,

bethripley

December 5, 2015

3D Printing in Medicine

Free and Open-Source 3D Printing Software at RSNA 2015

If you attended my open-source 3D printing didactic talk or open-source 3D printing workshop at this year's RSNA meeting and are interested in a having a copy of my slides (I have been asked several times), or if you are not at the meeting and are just interested, you can find them here. They are an attached PDFs and links. Manual for Open-Source 3D printing workshop (PDF) Other resources to help you get 3D Printing the Embodi3D tutorials page: http://www.embodi3d.com/tut

Dr. Mike

November 29, 2015

Underground Science Lab, BUGSS, Becomes a Hub for 3D Bioprinting

Researches have been made on advancing the applications of 3D bioprinting. Thru this healthcare professionals are able to address complicated injuries and illnesses. The process of 3D bioprinting is utilized to generate tissues or living cells that help sustain growth and cell function within the printed cell or tissue. Patent on bioprinting was filed last 2003 and by 2006, it was then approved. It paved the way to more researches and encouraged hospitals and other research groups to co