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Simulating Tissues with 3D-Printed and Castable Materials

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Abstract

Manufacturing technologies continue to be developed and utilized in medical prototyping, simulations, and imaging phantom production. For radiologic image-guided simulation and instruction, models should ideally have similar imaging characteristics and physical properties to the tissues they replicate. Due to the proliferation of different printing technologies and materials, there is a diverse and broad range of approaches and materials to consider before embarking on a project. Although many printed materials’ biomechanical parameters have been reported, no manufacturer includes medical imaging properties that are essential for realistic phantom production. We hypothesize that there are now ample materials available to create high-fidelity imaging anthropomorphic phantoms using 3D printing and casting of common commercially available materials. A material database of radiological, physical, manufacturing, and economic properties for 29 castable and 68 printable materials was generated from samples fabricated by the authors or obtained from the manufacturer and scanned with CT at multiple tube voltages. This is the largest study assessing multiple different parameters associated with 3D printing to date. These data are being made freely available on GitHub, thus affording medical simulation experts access to a database of relevant imaging characteristics of common printable and castable materials. Full data available at: https://github.com/nmcross/Material-Imaging-Characteristics.

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Acknowledgments

Christopher Howard, Seattle Children’s Imagination Lab–multiple print samples.

David Zamora MS, UW Radiology–help with CT Physics.

Christina Brunquell PhD, UW Radiology–help with CT Physics.

Kalpana Kanal PhD, UW Radiology–help with CT Physics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, 1959 NE Pacific St., Seattle, WA, USA

    Michael O’Reilly, Michael Hoff & Nathan M Cross

  2. Seattle Children’s Hospital, 4800 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA, USA

    Seth D. Friedman

  3. School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    James F. X. Jones

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  1. Michael O’Reilly
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  2. Michael Hoff
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Correspondence to Nathan M Cross.

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O’Reilly, M., Hoff, M., Friedman, S.D. et al. Simulating Tissues with 3D-Printed and Castable Materials. J Digit Imaging 33, 1280–1291 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-020-00358-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-020-00358-6

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