News Finding: "I nearly jumped out of my chair when I saw what this technology is able to do," says Beth Ripley, M.D.
Paper Finding: This approach greatly expands the number of different anatomical structures that can be represented by different colors or materials (e.g., through the use of multiple thresholds) and, as such, can improve the interpretive value of 3D-printed anatomical models.
News Context: That's just a normal part of life for Steven Keating, Ph.D., who had a baseball-sized tumor removed from his brain at age 26 while he was a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter group. "I nearly jumped out of my chair when I saw what this technology is able to do," says Beth Ripley, M.D. "It creates exquisitely detailed 3D-printed medical models with a fraction of the manual labor currently required, making 3D printing more accessible to the medical field as a tool for research and diagnosis."
Paper Context: Consequently, even the smallest gap in a fine structure can lead to significant error or nonprintability of an .stl file, requiring the user to digitally generate regions of the structure that are often not present in the original data. This approach greatly expands the number of different anatomical structures that can be represented by different colors or materials (e.g., through the use of multiple thresholds) and, as such, can improve the interpretive value of 3D-printed anatomical models. To correctly represent routine medical CT data, for example, 4096 different material mixtures (corresponding to the 12-bit discretization of Hounsfield unit radiodensity values typically recorded) would need to be defined and associated with 4096 separate .stl files.