Physical human lumen carotid reconstruction: life-size models by rapid prototyping
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Data
2003-07
Autori
Murgia, Fabrizio
Franzoni, Gregorio
Pusceddu, Gabriella
Pili, Piero
Tuveri, Massimiliano
Titolo del periodico
ISSN
Titolo del volume
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Abstract
Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a technique used in industry for manufacturing prototypes. Its capability to physically reproduce geometrical complex shapes is getting increasing interest in many fields of medicine. In the field of vascular
surgery, replicas of artery lumen have utility in complex cases or when standard imaging is felt to be equivocal. Replicas can also facilitate experimental studies of computational vascular fluid-dynamics permitting in-vitro
reproductions of blood flow in living subjects before and after surgery.
The VIrtual VAscular (VIVA) project at CRS4, developed a system able to process three-dimensional (3D) datasets extracted from a Computer Tomography (CT) apparatus, visualize them, reconstruct the geometry of arteries of
specific patients, and simulate blood flow in them. In our work, the applicability of RP techniques to VIVA’s real size replicas of an autoptic carotid vessel lumen is presented and an overview of the RP based system developed is
provided. The techniques used in our prototype are discussed and experimental results for the creation of a human carotid lumen replica are analysed.
We discuss in detail the pipeline of the manufacturing process: 3D geometric reconstruction from segmented points, geometry tessellation, STL (Stereo Lithography format) conversion. Moreover we illustrate some technical details
of the specific RP technique called Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), used to build the lumen replicas, the materials used for prototypes, throughput time and costs of the FDM models realized.
The system is totally based on open-source software. This enables us to control each step of the pipeline, from data acquisition to STL export file. In this context, we present main sources of error encountered during all
manufacturing process stages.
Descrizione
Poster of SPIE Conference held in San Diego - CA, USA, 10/15 February
Keywords
rapid prototyping , FDM , solid modelling , STL , B-Spline