3D printing advances cerebral aneurysm research

Arizona State University (ASU)is host to a leading program in cerebral aneurysm research. Funding is provided in part by the Mayo Clinic and the National Science Foundation, among others. ASU’s research findings are directly applied at participating hospital partners and in the design of improved endovascular medical devices.

Key to the university’s research is use of the right 3D printer. Researchers at ASU use Solidscape’s T76PLUS BenchMark series 3D printers, which are capable of producing high quality, fully castable wax masters for intricate, fine designs. The T76PLUS uses a Windows interface, enabling its use with popular 3D design software. Included in the system is Smooth Curvature Printing (SCP), Solidscape’s printing technology that delivers high precision and surface finish.

“The Solidscape machine is the heart, backbone of our process. We use that to build the core blood vessel models that we then translate into transparent flow models for our experiments,” says Dr. David Frakes, principal investigator – Image Processing Applications Laboratory (IPALab), ASU. “The end product of our physical 3D modeling stage is a transparent block wherein there is a lost-core or a hollow portion of the model that is an exact replica of a cerebral aneurysm from a person. Rapid prototyping is how we get that first positive, before we get the negative, which is the flow model. All of the ground-truth data that is informing our simulations in the end, it comes from these models that the Solidscape machine helps us build.”

Educational institutes are using Solidscape high precision 3D printers in research projects that are medical, industrial, and military in nature. The goal is to improve human quality of life through the development and use of advanced image processing. Solidscape’s wax printers allow unlimited design flexibility, keeping expenses down and safeguarding the exclusivity of the digital design.

IPALab’s Cerebral Aneurysm project
The objective of current studies of cerebral aneurysms, at the Image Processing Applications Laboratory (IPALab) at Arizona State University, is to establish a foundation for understanding the fluid dynamics of aneurysms treated with endovascular devices through in-vitro experimentation and in-silico simulations. Researchers are also investigating the effects of various novel endovascular devices on cerebral aneurysm fluid dynamics. The ultimate goal of these studies is to improve treatment outcomes for patients with cerebral aneurysms.

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