The high cost of traditional 3D printing methods for multicolor models continues to be a large hindrance to its growing use in preoperative planning, Dr. Anish Ghodadra from Yale New Haven Hospital told AuntMinnie.com.
"Traditionally, printing multicolor models (especially models with clear components) required expensive printers (hundreds of thousands of dollars) and high raw material costs (hundreds to thousands per model)," he said. "And lower-cost printers either cannot print clear models or can only print in one material at a time."
Using a low-cost desktop stereolithography printer, Ghodadra and colleagues developed a technique to create these models at a fraction of the cost (less than $30 each) by modifying the model designs to allow for the addition of color after printing.
They will discuss in detail exactly how they did so with renal tumors and bony lesions.
"You can easily create clinically useful, patient-specific 3D-printed models at 1% of the cost of traditional techniques," he said. "This overcomes the primary barrier of clinical 3D printing for preoperative planning."
