New Partnership has Stratasys and Materialise Producing More Advanced 3D Printed Medical Models

At RSNA 2018, the annual meeting for the Radiological Society of North America that’s currently taking place at McCormick Place in Chicago this week, 3D printing heavy hitters Stratasys and Materialise are revealing a major partnership that will help further bring advanced, 3D printed medical models to life.

This spring, Materialise became the first company ever to get FDA clearance for software about 3D printing anatomical models for diagnostic use; to this day, it remains the only end-to-end 3D printing solution with 510(k) clearance. Now, Stratasys is expanding its suite of 3D printers and materials that have been officially validated by Materialise as part of its FDA-approved Materialise Mimics inPrint software, resulting in a versatile 3D printing system for point-of-care.

“By validating Stratasys’ 3D printing technologies through our certification process, we’re giving doctors and hospitals improved access to high-quality anatomical models for personalized care to patients. The addition of multi-color and multi-material printers to the list of validated printers is aimed to enable healthcare providers to implement a versatile offering that can support their most complex cases across a wide range of surgical specialties on a single printer,” said Bryan Crutchfield, the Vice President and General Manager of Materialise North America. “At Materialise, we take a hardware-agnostic approach to software development, offering the flexibility to partner with other leaders in the 3D printing industry like Stratasys – a company committed to addressing requirements of the medical community.”

Due to this collaboration between Materialise software and Stratasys PolyJet 3D printing, the production of 3D printed patient-specific anatomical models for diagnostics can continue to advance. Physicians can combine this solution with other tools and their own expect judgement to build highly accurate anatomic models for patients at the point-of-care. According to the company, 16 of the top 20 hospitals in the US, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, are using Materialise Mimics software as a medical 3D printing strategy…and this number could go up, thanks to the company’s new collaboration with Stratasys.

“Historically, pre-surgical planning relied on 2D imaging requiring physicians to mentally reconstruct the patient anatomy. But 3D printing evolves this approach by putting precise replicas of patient anatomy directly in physician hands,” explained Eyal Miller, the Head of Healthcare Business Unit, Stratasys. “Our collaboration with Materialise is a huge step towards unlocking the potential of this technology for patient care. Now the 3D printer that every hospital needs to power their medical modeling comes with additional options for an FDA-cleared software solution.”

Stratasys PolyJet multi-color and multi-material 3D printing solutions that have been validated by Materialise now included its high-performance Objet30 Prime, along with its multi-color J735 and J750 3D printers. The Objet30 Prime. The cost-effective Objet30 Prime is a versatile desktop platform that can support multiple anatomical models and applications, such as cardiac, neurosurgery, and orthopedic, along with use-cases for education, surgical planning, training, and visualization. It’s the perfect system to give hospitals a foot in the door to point-of-care 3D printing.

The multi-color, multi-material Stratasys J735 and J750 3D printers can both create complex models with multiple textures, and can also mimic human tissue by combining both soft and hard materials. This helps doctors and other medical practitioners fabricate realistic replicas of bone, organ, and tissue, while also differentiating between different anatomy and getting a closer look at the critical structures inside an organ replica.

At RSNA 2018, which ends on Friday, Stratasys will be showcasing both its J750 and Objet30 Prime 3D printers. Visit  Booth #1968L in the South Hall to see detailed customer use-cases, presentations, and exclusive hands-on demonstrations.

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