SBIR Phase I: Multi-Material 3D Printing of Personalized Medical Simulation Models

SBIR第一阶段项目将开发必要的技术和制造工作流程，为医疗专业人员提供极其逼真的组织和器官物理模型。这些模型将快速（在几个小时内），廉价和按需制造。它们将根据患者的具体情况而定？的CT和MRI扫描数据。 这将对肿瘤切除等复杂医疗程序的规划产生深远的影响，并将使医疗专业人员及其团队能够实践患者特定的手术场景。这将改善手术效果，提高手术室的效率，减少医疗差错，据某些统计，医疗差错是美国第三大死亡原因。3D打印逼真的人体器官模型的能力也将为医学生提供一种实践具有广泛多样性的医疗程序的方法。这将加快学习速度，扩大培训经验的广度。 同样，这些模型将为医疗专业人员提供一种按需实施罕见、高风险手术的方法。拟议的3D模型将成为医疗模拟工具箱的核心部分，并将实现新一代的手术规划和教育。快速、廉价和按需制造极其逼真的物理模型的能力依赖于一种新型的多材料增材制造工艺，该工艺具有由机器视觉实现的闭环反馈回路。这种新工艺逐层制造物体，每层都由一组离散的元素制成，其中每个元素都由一组材料中的一种材料制成。闭环系统的使用允许结合具有广泛机械和外观特性的液体和固体。开发一种模拟真实的组织特性所必需的材料调色板将是该项目的关键部分。这种材料调色板将通过在空间上将基础材料组合成复合结构来扩展。该项目的第二个主要推力依赖于软件设计工作流程，该工作流程将描述模拟模型的几何和材料规范（例如，器官或组织）转换成多材料体积数据。体积数据将用作多材料打印平台的输入。新的设计工作流程需要开发超越传统的基于边界的CAD表示的建模方法。

This SBIR Phase I project will develop the necessary technology and manufacturing workflows to provide medical professionals with extremely realistic physical models of tissues and organs. The models will be manufactured rapidly (within a few hours), inexpensively, and on-demand. They will be patient-specific based on the patient?s CT and MRI scan data. This will have profound implications on the planning of complex medical procedures such as tumor removal and will enable medical professionals and their teams to practice patient-specific surgical scenarios. This will improve surgical outcome, generate efficiencies in the operating room and decrease medical errors which, by some accounts, are the third largest cause of death in the United States. The ability to 3D print realistic human organ models will also provide medical students with a way to practice medical procedures with a wide degree of diversity. This will accelerate the learning rate and expand the breadth of training experiences. Similarly, the models will provide a way for medical professionals to practice rare, high-risk procedures on-demand. The proposed 3D models will become a central part of the medical simulation toolbox and will enable a new generation of surgical planning and education.The ability to manufacture extremely realistic physical models rapidly, inexpensively, and on-demand relies on a novel multimaterial additive manufacturing process with a closed-feedback loop enabled by machine vision. This new process manufactures objects layer by layer, each layer made from a discrete set of elements, where each element is built from one material from a pallette of materials. The use of the closed-feedback loop system allows incorporating both liquids and solids with a wide range of mechanical and appearance properties. The development of a material palette that is necessary to mimic properties of real tissues will be a crucial part of the project. This material palette will be expanded by spatially combining base materials into composite structures. The second main thrust of the project relies on a software design workflow that translates geometric and material specifications describing a simulation model (e.g., an organ or a tissue) into multimaterial volumetric data. The volumetric data will be used as input to the multimaterial printing platform. The new design workflow requires development of modeling approaches that go beyond traditional, boundary-based CAD representations.