This is not to say that 3D printed organ models aren’t extremely useful, but…could they be made to be more useful? They sure can, says a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota. The researchers have 3D printed organ models that not only look like actual organs, they feel like them and have the same mechanical properties. They even have soft sensors that provide feedback to let surgeons know how much pressure they can apply without tissue damage, for example.
“We are developing next-generation organ models for pre-operative practice. The organ models we are 3D printing are almost a perfect replica in terms of the look and feel of an individual’s organ, using our custom-built 3D printers,” said lead researcher Michael McAlpine, an associate professor of mechanical engineering in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering and a 2017 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
“We think these organ models could be ‘game-changers’ for helping surgeons better plan and practice for surgery. We hope this will save lives by reducing medical errors during surgery.”
The team was initially contacted by Dr. Robert Sweet, a urologist formerly from the University of Minnesota now working at the University of Washington. He was looking for better 3D models of the prostate. The researchers took MRI scans and tissue samples from the prostates of three patients, then they developed customized silicone-based 3D printing inks that can be tuned to precisely match the mechanical properties of each patient’s individual prostate – so they’re not just 3D printing a model that feels like a prostate, they’re 3D printing a model that feels like a specific patient’s prostate.
The models were 3D printed in the university’s custom-built 3D printer, then soft 3D printed sensors were attached. The researchers then observed how the models reacted to compression tests and a variety of surgical tools.
“The sensors could give surgeons real-time feedback on how much force they can use during surgery without damaging the tissue,” said Kaiyan Qiu, a University of Minnesota mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. “This could change how surgeons think about personalized medicine and pre-operative practice.”
“If we could replicate the function of these tissues and organs, we might someday even be able to create ‘bionic organs’ for transplants,” McAlpine said. “I call this the ‘Human X’ project. It sounds a bit like science fiction, but if these synthetic organs look, feel, and act like real tissue or organs, we don’t see why we couldn’t 3D print them on demand to replace real organs.”
Authors of the paper include Kaiyan Qiu, Zichen Zhao, Ghazaleh Haghiashtiani, Shuang-Zhuang Guo, Mingyu He, Ruitao Su, Zhijie Zhu, Didarul B. Bhuiyan, Paari Murugan, Fanben Meng, Sung Hyun Park, Chih-Chang Chu, Brenda M. Ogle, Daniel A. Saltzman, Badrinath R. Konety, Robert M. Sweet and Michael C. McAlpine.
Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.
[Source/Images: University of Minnesota]