Dr. Mike

Angel Sosa just posted an excellent article about this. What else can we do?

Great article. Thanks for posting Angel.

Good luck. Please repost here how things work out. I'd be interested in seeing how your experiments go.

Unfortunately, like many conferences this spring, this one is also cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Maybe next year?

Interesting article about the hidden costs of 3D printing.

My guess is that if you are printing with FDM, lots of air bubbles will be caught between the layers and lines of your print. Like air in the body, ultrasound will not penetrate that and you will get "dirty shadowning" and it will not matter what material you are using. Maybe you should be look to STL as a better print method that doesn't have air bubbles? Not sure what the ultrasonic characteristics of those materials might be though. Dr. Mike

Friends, The coronavirus pandemic we are now facing is an unmitigated disaster the likes of which have not been seen since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. I work at the hospital in Kirkland, Washington, USA that is the epicenter of the epidemic in the US. We currently have more than 100 known or suspected COVID-19 cases at our hospital, with many more to be coming. As shown in the story linked below, 3D printers are being used in Italy to address a specific problem with a shortage of valves. It's a great story. This raises the question: What we can we do with 3D printing to help with this coronavirus outbreak? I am personally unsure, but the inventiveness of the Italy valves is inspiring. I have identified the following areas where there is need. There are surely others I have missed. Can 3D printing be used in any way to address these problems? I am calling on the medical 3D printing community to contribute ideas, whether related to 3D printing or not, to help with this unprecedented disaster. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET -- YOUR BRAINPOWER -- TO THIS PROBLEM. Areas of need: Coronavirus testing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), respirators, gloves, gowns, etc. Aids to social isolation Helping with sterilization/cleaning of equipment Shortages of hospital beds/space Other areas? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51911070 Thank you all and be safe! Dr. Mike

I remember seeing 3D printed skulls from CT scans many years ago at JPAC, the Joint POW MIA Accounting command based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. It was a pretty cool idea to study the 3D printed models so that the original remains could be buried, thus giving families closure, etc. I think there is great potential in anthropology for this type of technology.

I've never used this filament but it looks interesting. Anybody have experience with it?

Do you know how much the Philips Intellispace Portal costs? Alternatives like democratiz3D and 3D Slicer are free.

Whaaaaaat???? That is a crazy, and brilliant, idea. What kind of advances can be done with this. Immediately bioassay tests (antibiotic resistance assays for example) come to mind.

This is an interesting topic. I think that a cluster of smaller, cheaper FDM printers is much more efficient and cost effective than fewer larger printers. Also, they are more fault tolerant. If a print fails, you only need to reprint a small part, not a larger more expensive part. Essentially this is the concept behind server clusters or RAID hard drive arrays. Use many smaller cheaper units to do the work of more expensive ones.

Dear Envision, Thanks for being a great member. The problem isn't with democratiz3D but rather the CT scan. Actually it isn't the CT scan really either, but the metal in the patient's back. You see, the x-rays cannot penetrate the metal implants at all, so the CT detector interprets this as a dense, star-like pattern that is called beam hardening artifact. It is a common artifact in CT scans where patients have metal implants. Although there are some experimental research algorithms that when run at the time of the scan can remove these artifacts, they need to be on the actual scanner. Most CT scanners do not have this type of artifact correction. My tutorial on how to choose a good CT scan for 3D printing has a section on this called Imaging Artifact. Take a look and you will see what I mean. When the scan with the artifact is plugged into democratiz3D, the artifact is reproduced as well. Democratiz3D doesn't know what is artifact and what is bone. Other than getting a scan without the artifact, the only other options are to manually edit the mesh and remove the artifact, or live with it and understand that it represents artifact and not real anatomy. I know this isn't ideal but it is the limit of the technology today. Hope this helps. Dr. Mike