Liesbeth Kemel

Visualizing Kyphoscoliosis Surgery with a 3D-Printed Spine Model

Specialist spine surgeons at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool used medical 3D Printing in preparation for a life-changing surgery. The patient in question was an eight-year-old from Wales with kyphoscoliosis, a complex congenital spinal problem. The surgeons modeled and printed her spine in 3D, giving them a much better oversight for the procedure.

Read more

3D Printing a Model of Scarred Heart Tissue

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust has been increasingly implementing 3D Printing in its hospital services. The latest addition to their offer has been the ability to 3D print heart models based on Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) scans from their patients. And most innovatively of all, the Trust has developed a way of 3D Printing heart models that also show signs of scarring.

Read more

Two-Year-Old's VSD Heart Patched Up with the Help of Medical 3D-Printing

Two-year old British Mina Khan was born with a complex hole between her ventricles (VSD). This life-threatening congenital defect exhausted her. Pumping blood around the hole took up all her energy, leaving her breathless, unable to eat or put on weight — even her hair wouldn’t grow. Doctors feared the hole was too big to repair, especially in the tiny, delicate heart of a toddler. Even for experienced pediatric surgeons, this would be a very risky operation.

Read more

Investigating a 435,000-Year-Old Murder with 3D Analysis

It seems that murder has been around for a long time. Researchers at the Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos in Spain have investigated the earliest evidence of lethal interpersonal violence in the hominin fossil record with the help of 3D analysis. The interesting findings shed a light on human social relations over 435.000 years ago.

Read more

Visualizing Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation: the PCR Valve Atlas

The PCR Valve Atlas is a visual atlas covering all aspects of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI). The application, an initiative of PCR, the main reference source for the cardiovascular community, targets intermediate level interventionists and surgeons as well as medical professionals planning to start a TAVI program.

Read more

When a Complex Congenital Heart Surgery Goes Exactly to Plan

3-year-old Ivy was born with a complex congenital heart disease (CHD), and diagnosed with absent pulmonary valve syndrome and Tetralogy of Fallot. When she was 6 months old, the girl underwent an operation to repair these conditions, which were causing her pulmonary arteries to dilate out of proportion and compressing her airways. The surgeon at the time carried out the LeCompte Maneuver during the repair, which involves the re-plumbing of the pulmonary arteries anterior to the aorta to relieve pressure on the patient’s lungs. A conduit was positioned between the right ventricle and the pulmonary arteries.

Read more

Removing a Rare Sinus Tumor: Medical 3D Printing at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital

15-year-old Parker Turchan was faced with an unexpected and life-threatening tumor, located in his nose and sinuses, and which extended all the way through his skull to his brain. Referred to the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, doctors faced the limitations of conventional endoscopy as the sinus tumor extended so deep into the bone they were unable to visualize it completely.

Read more

Visualizing Kyphoscoliosis Surgery with a 3D-Printed Spine Model

Specialist spine surgeons at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool used medical 3D Printing in preparation for a life-changing surgery. The patient in question was an eight-year-old from Wales with kyphoscoliosis, a complex congenital spinal problem. The surgeons modeled and printed her spine in 3D, giving them a much better oversight for the procedure.

Read more

Supporting a Minimally Invasive Pancoast Tumor Resection

Michael Slag was suffering from a growing Pancoast tumor, a rare type of lung cancer. As it intertwined with several critical nerves and blood vessels, surgical tumor resection was complicated as the functioning of his arm could be damaged. To reduce this risk and keep the intervention minimally-invasive, the surgical team at Mayo Clinic used Materialise Mimics software to convert the MRI and CT scans to a 3D-printable model of the tumor and the surrounding tissue and ribs. On the model they could observe exactly how the tumor was wrapped around several of Michael’s critical nerves and blood vessels.

Read more

Shedding a New Light on the Origin of Brain Folds

A research team led by Tuomas Tallinen (Department of Physics and Nanoscience Center, University of Jyvaskyla), Jun Young Chung and Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan (Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University) is studying the folded structure of the human brain. Their findings published in Nature Physics indicate that the convoluted structure can be attributed to mechanical compression. A 3D-printed model was used by the researchers to support their theory.

Read more