Improved 3D Printing for Patient-Specific Medical Diagnosis
- Magazine Article
- TBMG-29753
- English
What if you could hold a physical model of your own brain in your hands, accurate down to its every unique fold? That's just a normal part of life for Steven Keating, PhD, 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. Curious to see what his brain actually looked like before the tumor was removed, and with the goal of better understanding his diagnosis and treatment options, Keating collected his medical data and began 3D printing his MRI and CT scans, but was frustrated that existing methods were prohibitively time-intensive and cumbersome and failed to accurately reveal important features of interest. Keating reached out to some of his group's collaborators, including members of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, who were exploring a new method for 3D printing biological samples.