Request for assistance: Pipeline for medical images to 3D prints for public education/demo

3D Fabrication
#1

I work in medical imaging and my university has an upcoming ‘public visit’ and demonstration day. I have some fairly simple and safe demos I’d like to let kids perform. However, currently my imaging subjects are milk bottles. I’d like to be able to have realistic plastic heads/brains for the kids to ‘image’.

I have a set of segmented 3d MRI images and have exported these to STL files of brain and scalp. I would like to be able to print a ‘skull’ with a hollow brain, which I would fill with liquid. Ideally, the brain would be segmented into a couple of chambers.

Can anyone suggest a pipeline, preferably with GNU-license or similar software? Again ideally, I’d like to be able to print a series of these models.

Thanks much,
David

4 Likes
#2

I’ve tried to do this by following youtube tutorials and couldn’t get the results needed for a 3D print. If anyone is successful or wants to teach a class please keep me posted - I’ll even pay someone for tutorial times.

1 Like
#3

Post an example. I suspect someone will fiddle with it possibly resulting in something useful.

An oddly specific request.

Printing at DMS? Somewhere else? (The printer you will be using may make a difference.)

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#4

Brian,
I am not in a position to post these data sets publicly due to restrictions from the group which produced the underlying data- they make it available, but only through their website with registration.
I’m happy to use licenses other than GNU, but commercial software licensing can be challenging for multiple students, etc., so I try to use open source software when I can.
I hope to use the Form2 printer.
thank you,
David

#5

I’ve not used it so I won’t be any help other than I believe the Form2 has its own slicer. If that’s true you will be best served by starting with that software.

I don’t understand the goal. Will the students be printing the models? Or imaging the models?

#6

So you don’t necessarily need specific scans modeled - you need body-part-shaped items suitable for MRI scanning.

Perhaps you can find suitable models already built here:
https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/3D-Models/free/medical

Many are NOT already in STL format, so you would need to scale and convert them, but I think this is closer to what you’re looking for.

#7

Brian,
I’m sorry, I was not clear.
My (grad) students will be working on similar images in the future, hopefully printing them for various purposes.
Kids (grade school) at the public events will shine flashlights through the models as a demonstration of how a specific medical monitor works.
I want to have realistic models for the 8 year olds to shine lights through- this is the objective right now.

thanks,
David

1 Like
#8

Hank,
I’m afraid I do need specific scans modeled for the next stage of this project- I have a series of scans of infants born at different degrees of prematurity.
I appreciate the reference.

thanks,
David

#9

I do industrial CT scanning for a living. Can you (privately) provide the data, STL and either image stacks or DICOM files or something? I’ve not done much with medical software but mine should make short work of this project.

3 Likes
#10

Done. Emailed.

If you need to do this sort of thing yourself, I suggest either meshlab or blender. Both are open source.

1 Like
#11

Make Magazine published an article on how to process DICOM files into STLs, using Open Source software.

https://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-your-medical-scan/

Quote from the article:
Probably the most commonly used Open Source software applications for processing medical images are OsiriX and 3D Slicer (not to be confused with Slic3r, the G-code generator for 3D printers).

Both of these applications are open source. Both OsiriX and Slicer are built upon the open source toolkits ITK and VTK. However, OsiriX is only available in Mac, while Slicer is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is the reason we’ll focus on it for the rest of this article.

An article I read on Hackaday ( https://hackaday.com/2015/01/17/husband-uses-mri-images-to-3d-print-wifes-skull-and-tumor/ ) mentioned another free package called Invesalius:
http://svn.softwarepublico.gov.br/trac/invesalius

3 Likes
#12

Drbusch had stls, just didn’t have a good way of modifying them.

#13

Thank you all for your suggestions and help.