Biomedical Use of 3D Printing

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Amanda Kowalski

The medical uses of 3D printing have grown significantly in the past few years with advancements in the technologies available. Not only can exact versions of patient organs be printed using a variety of materials, but there have been advancements that have allowed for real organs to be printed to replace the originals. Also, stem cells, blood vessels, tissues, cartilage, bones, and cancer cells are being printed.

Biomedical imaging is the main source for the files needed to be able to print the organs, cells, tissues, etc. Some types of biomedical imaging include CT scans, MRIs, X-rays, and ultrasounds. Most of these produce DICOM (.dcm) files that can be viewed in OsiriX and edited in Meshlab, both free-to-download software that I used in my research.

1st attempt: Human Skull

Very early on in my research, I learned that DICOM files are hard to find without patient permission and many of the files are hard to work with. My first type of file that I learned how to use the software with was a human skull.

I started in OsiriX and produced a 3D rendering that was very easy to work with since it had very little editing involved. Here is a progression of the file:

3D surface rendering in OsiriX

Edited file in Meshlab

Edited file in Maker software

I found out quickly that while the skull was easy to edit, it was not going to print without some major cuts and super glue.

2nd attempt: Human Heart

I decided to challenge myself to a more advanced file to learn more about the software and the world of biomedical 3D printing. I chose to work with a heart because I knew it was a little more interesting than a skull, but I was not prepared for all the challenges that comes with editing an organ file.

First of all, finding a heart file that rendered clean was pretty much impossible with the resources I had. Most files came up very messy or were not what I was looking for. Also, once I had a file, it was basically impossible to edit to a printable form. Here’s my attempt to edit a human heart:

3D rendering in OsiriX

Edited version in Meshlab

Clearly, there was not much I could do with the file I had. There was too much to work with and I didn’t know enough about the file or the software to make it printable.

Final attempt: Human Brain

After a lot of frustration working with heart files, I talked with a good friend of mine from back home who is studying medicine at another university. She was very interested in my project and told me she had some MRI scans laying around from a few years ago. She was a pleomorphic liposarcoma patient and went through 2 surgeries in 2009. The files she gave me were from a check up in 2012.

Her cancer was below her cheek, so the MRI was from her neck up and cut off the very top of her head. This was semi-unfortunate for me, but I still wanted to work with her files because of the story behind it. She is now a 5 year cancer survivor and I was excited to see what I could do with her MRI. Here is a progression of the file:

2D rendering without editing in OsiriX

3D surface rendering in Osirix without editing

2D slice with individually edited out non-brain parts in OsiriX

3D surface rendering of edited version in OsiriX

Ready-to-print file in Maker software

Successful print

The top of the file being cut off in the MRI was almost helpful with the actual print because it created a flat surface. I would have liked to have a complete brain, but what ended up printing was enough for me to be satisfied. Also, I learned that it is possible that I cut out too much while I was editing the individual slices, so more knowledge with MRI scans is encouraged before taking on this type of project. But, overall, I am thrilled with the results and I’m excited to give my friend a 3D print of her brain!

Biomedical 3D Printing Community

While there are not many resources to get the files necessary to 3D print organs and such, the small community that exists for this type of work is amazing. I found a great resource here: http://www.embodi3d.com. This resource includes blogs, forums to ask questions, and a source for files ready for printing. It’s great to see that there are people out there that want to teach what they know about 3D printing and making it useful in the biomedical field.

I am very interested to see where biomedical 3D printing goes in the coming years. I believe it will continue to grow and become even more popular as the technology advances.

I encourage anyone interested in the topic to explore the basic software and try out 3D printing at the Maker Lab or your local Makerspace. I’ve learned a lot from just messing around with the different functions in the software, and there are some tutorials that go step-by-step online that are pretty useful for beginners. If you are interested in hearing more about my research, feel free to contact me at arkowal2@illinois.edu or via twitter @ARoseK10.

Week 5 & 6: Fusion 360

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Amanda Kowalski

I’ve learned so much in the past two weeks. Week 5 was an introduction to Fusion 360, a super cool software that can be quite complex even with step-by-step instructions.

The workshop I participated in to learn Fusion 360 was great. Our main task was to create a model of a lamp.

Here’s a progression of that process:

My lamp turned out pretty well in the end. It took some time for me to figure out a lot of the steps, but after a lot of trial and error I managed to get to the final product. I definitely struggled through it and got frustrated a few times, but I never gave up.

After that workshop, we were assigned to try to create a new design on our own by following a tutorial on youtube. I chose to try out some headphones.

Here’s the headphones I ended up creating:

I ran into some major problems with this design even though I was following a pretty straight forward tutorial. I messed up one little step without realizing it would cause problems later, and I didn’t know how to fix it without undoing all the progress I had made after that step.

Basically, the best way to explain the mistake was that there were two faces merging together and they were somewhat overlapped, which is not good. Here’s what it looked like after I “fixed” it:

Yeah, there’s a lot of extra faces there. I had to mess around with that for a long time until they weren’t overlapping anymore. I did try to use some functions like smoothing and merging faces, but I couldn’t get it quite right so I mostly stuck with the simpler steps until it looked decent and wasn’t overlapping.

After going through that mess I was very frustrated with Fusion 360 and just wanted to move on. But then week 6 came and we were supposed to 3D print our design. I did not want to print my headphones, so I decided to try to make a custom design with no tutorial.

I chose to try to make a candle holder since I had recently purchased a couple candles. Well, Fusion 360 didn’t get any easier for me. This is how far I got after a long hour of attempts:

I hated it. And I really wanted to print something, so I moved over to the simpler modeling option, tinkercad. I made this in about 30 minutes with no issues at all:

But then I thought why not try to use a function in Fusion 360 where I import what I made in tinkercad and edit it more in Fusion 360.

This is what happened as soon as I uploaded it:

Yeah…there was way too much going on and I just wanted a simple candle holder. So I took the original tinkercad version and printed the design just like in week 4 with the bust I made of myself.

And here’s the final product:

My lesson over the past two weeks was a big one. I learned that I am not good at Fusion 360. I need a lot more practice! It is so fulfilling when something I designed is printed, so taking it to the next level by printing something designed in Fusion 360 would be incredible.

Week 4

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Amanda Kowalski

This week’s class was my favorite so far. I got to directly use a 3D printer! I’ve watched things being printed in the lab before and recently learned how to make designs, but this week I did the whole process in a few hours.

We started with learning about scanning objects. And then we found out the project for the day was to 3D print our own heads! I was excited to get started.

Scanning people turned out to be quite difficult. For example, my nose would not properly scan in unit about the 5th try, but then my chin wouldn’t process, then the top of my head. Basically, scanning requires a lot of patience.

It was fun to see how this technology worked. I never realized that it was possible to digitalize an object with one device. Plus, it was relatively easy to use in terms of the editing process. Once I finally had a scan that had all of my face in it, the flyaway hairs could be virtually cut off in seconds.

The next step was to take the file from the scan and edit it a bit more in tinkercad. This was quick and easy for me because after we were first introduced to the website a few weeks ago I played around with it until it a lot. I put a base under my scanned head to create a bust of myself that could now be printed.

This is where I got really excited. I even took pictures! So once the editing in tinkercad was finalized, the file was imported into the makerware program that directly translates to the makerbots in the lab.

Here is my bust in the MakerBot program (sorry for the poor quality):

I was so excited to print my head that I went straight for the first available machine while others stayed in tinkercad to edit fun things onto their bust. While I waited for it to print, I went crazy and posted this poor quality picture from my phone taken of my laptop’s screen to every social media platform. (Don’t ask why I didn’t think to take a screenshot.)

Finally, after what seemed like hours even though it was probably only 30 or so minutes, my head was printed!

Here it is:

I was thrilled! And, again, posted this picture on every social media platform. Including snapchat which is how I communicate with my roommate who’s abroad in London right now. (So my print was seen by people across the world!)

The rest of class I helped out others with their editing in tinkercad and got to admire my completed project. Later I sent a picture of me with my bust to my parents and directly to my friends who I was most excited to share it with.

Here’s the pic of me with my mini-me:

As you can tell by the picture, my print was very tiny. But I’m so happy with how it turned out and it made me even more excited for what projects are coming next in this class.

As Professor Rindfleisch (the guest speaker of the week) mentioned, there’s a sense of pride in making things with your own hands. I agree that after this experience I feel much more accomplished now that I have gone through the whole scanning and 3D printing process.

Digital Making at the MakerLab

Spring2015

Tag Archives: 3Dprint

Biomedical Use of 3D Printing

Week 5 & 6: Fusion 360

Week 4