A variety of benefits have resulted from the advent of 3-D technology, with many of those benefits extending to the medical field.
Three-dimensional technology is helping train medical professionals on how to perform surgeries without endangering a patient. Experts can also create prototypes for new products, such as advanced prosthetics and cancer- detection devices.
Dr. Joe Beaman is a mechanical engineering professor at The University of Texas who developed a type of additive manufacturing called Selective Laser Sintering, or SLS, in 1985, paving the way for various methods of 3-D printing.
Additive manufacturing builds a 3-D part layer by layer; SLS uses a laser to precisely heat material—such as the powder form of plastic—to build an object. SLS is the main type of 3-D printing used for manufacturing, Beaman said.
One of Beaman’s students recently created realistic models of human hearts from CT scans. Each heart had a different ailment to help medical students practice possible surgeries, such as correcting an irregular heartbeat, on the model heart without risk to a patient, he said. The next step is to create human organs using SLS technology, he said, but that is not yet possible.
“It’s realistic, but not today,” Beaman said. “There are people that can print down cells and [the cells] live, but the trouble is getting blood to it.”
Working organs made using 3-D printing could be possible in the next 10 years or later, said Dr. Michael Patton, president and CEO of Medical Innovation Labs, an Austin-based medical research clinic. Patton works with inventors to help their ideas become products that could help innovate the medical field.
Three-dimensional printing technology is also being used by fellow UT mechanical engineering professor Dr. Rick Neptune to develop prototypes of prosthetics and orthotics for amputees.
“We use it primarily as a research tool. We quickly make functional prototypes, and it’s a nice, fast, easy way to change the design characteristics and see how the amputee performs,” Neptune said. “The future is definitely being able to make subject-specific prosthetic and orthotic devices because that’s the ideal application of additive manufacturing—to make very unique things.”
Nylon is shaped using SLS technology to create the prototypes. Once the design is perfected, the final product is typically made using carbon fiber or another more durable material. Nylon is not durable enough to withstand repeated weight and force in the same way as carbon fiber, Neptune said.
Customized products made using SLS technology could have other medical benefits, Neptune said. For instance, a 3-D scaffold could help repair a uniquely shaped broken bone, he said.
Three-dimensional technology is already being used by Austin Breast Imaging to detect cancer. The radiology clinic is led by Dr. Stephen Rose, who pioneered the practice of using 3-D mammograms to detect possible cancer in breasts instead of the traditional 2-D mammogram.
“In the past if you found something subtle on a 2-D mammogram the odds were it was going to be nothing, so you would be calling back a lot of people and it would end up being nothing,” Rose said. “The great thing about 3-D is when you make a subtle finding on 3-D the likelihood of it being significant is high, so we’re able to find very early tumors we couldn’t have seen before.”
Looking at each layer of the breast using a 3-D mammogram allowed a 37 percent reduction in false positives and a 54 percent increase in detection of invasive cancers, Rose said. The number of patients who required a biopsy also decreased, he said.
“We reduced our false positives and we increased our true positives,” Rose said. “It’s just a better mammogram.”
The technology works for all age groups and all levels of breast density, Rose said.
