Can Medical Imaging Be Used With Three-Dimensional Printing?

Whilst many radical revolutions in medical imaging are focused on new approaches to designing imaging machines and taking advantage of machine learning to allow for accurate results with less expensive and intensive machines, there are other, even more fascinating use cases being explored.

One of the most fascinating implementations of accurate three-dimensional medical imaging technologies such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging is found in the Mayo Clinic’s 3D anatomic modelling laboratory.

This laboratory converts accurate medical images into personalised, detailed models using three-dimensional printing, allowing for tactile visual aids to help patients understand potential procedures. However, researchers at Mayo Clinic are exploring the potential to go even further than accurate impressions.

The research team is exploring the potential of using a 3D bioprinter, which uses biocompatible cell structures to “print” tissue structures that could be used for research and potentially even therapeutic purposes.

Because these models would effectively be alive, they could be used to help in the study of the progression of diseases and screen for a range of conditions such as the final stages of organ failure, defects in bone and cartilage density and inflammation.

Its use in disease models would allow for more focused laboratory testing of treatments and medication in close to real-world conditions, but it could go beyond this and potentially lead to treatments in and of itself.

The end goal for the research team is to check the technology’s feasibility for bioprinting tissue and potentially even functioning organs.

The implications of this technology if it were to successfully bioprint organs is almost impossible to comprehend but the complex nature of organ structures has currently made such an ambition extremely challenging.

Networks of blood vessels need to be printed at scale, something that the current bioprinted structures have struggled with.

As well as this, there is the issue of potential organ rejection, which is a problem with transplantation in general, but were it to be overcome, it could potentially change the world.