3D Printing – a Medical Application of Surgical Virtual Planning

There is an increasing adoption of Additive Manufacturing (AM, also called 3D Printing) technology to create anatomic models. The idea is to plan complex surgical procedures using real physical personalized models (three dimensional with identical detailed dimensions) in fields like neurosurgery, maxillofacial, cardiac, otolaryngology, plastic ,orthopedic , urologic and general surgery. The technology offers advantages over the existing physical model practices of cost, time, accuracy, production simplicity etc. The physical model is based on data acquired from the specific patient Imaging Data (in DICOM format) predominantly Computer Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The benefit of printed patient-specific anatomic models are shorter time of surgery, decreased infection rate, less hospitalization period, decreased morbidity and mortality. The AM technology also opens an opportunity to entirely new medical applications like custom-made surgical guides and tailor-made implantable metallic devices.