Siamese Twins and Sharing 3D Medical Files
Jun 28, 2009 5 Comments 
It's coming. Soon you'll be able to scan parts of your body at home and print them out. Earlier today I wrote about 3D medical scans and the 3D printing happening in the UK on the MakerBot blog, but I can't get my mind off of it. It is very cool that you can get your fetus scanned, even if you don't have siamese twins! Once it's scanned you can get it 3D printed. Super bonus points to the first person to put a scanned medical image on Thingiverse. This is just the beginning of the scanning and 3D printing revolution in the medical sector.
Imagine this: Every month, I get a body scan that documents many layers of my biology from bones to nervous system. Then, one day, I break my finger and print out a replacement on my MakerBot made out of PLA, which is a bio-compatible plastic we're in the process of manufacturing. I bring it to the surgeon who has his office, not in a huge medical complex, but in his office around the corner. He replaces the bone as if it's a spare tire and I'm good to go.
This isn't science fiction. This is five minutes into the future.
Reader Comments (5)
DAMN! We where working on this too.
My entree for the price is on thingiverse :)
Hi Bre !
If you want to replace a bone in your finger, you've got to think of the flesh around it, the cartilage, the veins, nerves, etc.
It's a bit more complicated than chnaging a tyre or a gearbox, don't you think ?
Patrick (aka Pattt974 on Twitter)
Bre- Actually, you probably wouldn't want a plastic finger -- instead, you might print a hydroxyapatite scaffold of a bone which would then be replaced by your body with real bone
Nikki Stott and Tobie Kerridge, two designers at the Royal College of Art did a project using donated bone cells from couples to grow rings of real bone on a ceramic scaffold.
Weird stuff, but how cool would it be to grow bone of shell over top of a makerbotprint?!
3d scanning from Surfdev, a specialist scanning service performed by a reverse engineering company.
Yeah, I'm with Patrick on this one - replacing bones is a bit more complicated than you might think. They're not just solid calciferous tissue. Every bone in the body is covered in a mass of blood vessels, nerve tissue, and separating/filtering membranes. Inside, they house our bone marrow - the factory that constantly pumps out new red blood cells. Replace too many bones and you might find it difficult to breath. :P
That's not to mention the damage and tissue trauma you'd cause getting down to the bone level. There's very few bones in the body that aren't enclosed by tendons, muscle tissue and separating membranes. Cutting through that lot to replace a bone is a tedious and careful job that can take the body years to recover from. Think about anyone you know with a replacement hip, shoulder or knee joint.
Probably better to just take it easy on that busted digit for a couple of weeks, eh?