Bringing images to life

Keck Medicine of USC is turning medical images into replicas of patients’ livers, hearts or pelvises.

When we think of a printer, our minds may flash to the machines in our office that spit out one-dimensional pieces of paper with text or photos.

Keck Medicine of USC, however, is using specialized medical grade 3D printers to turn medical images like computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) into replicas of patients’ livers, hearts or pelvises.

Our experts then use these prints to better visualize and understand a patient’s complex medical condition or practice the best surgical solution before entering the operating room.

It’s a reality due to the talents of Summer Decker, PhD, who leads 3D imaging for Keck Medicine, and her long-time collaborator Jonathan Ford, PhD. Together they head up the USC Center for Innovation in Medical Visualization at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, located on our health sciences campus.

Medical 3D prints are revolutionizing surgeries across disciplines throughout the health system — cardiology, transplant, cancer and orthopedics — which may lead to improved patient outcomes.

This technology that creates physical representations of the body that look and feel like organs or joints has played a key role in many complicated cases, from helping doctors diagnose and correct a debilitating pelvic abnormality to detecting a previously hard-to-see breast tumor.

Patients also benefit from the chance to see the 3D reproductions. Recently, for example,  a patient was able to see and hold a print of their complicated hip injury to truly understand how the surgeon was going to repair it using a custom solution designed from their own anatomy.

Decker and Ford also print patient-specific cutting guides — small, customized tools that fit on a patient’s bone and help the surgeon know precisely where to drill or cut. The guides, most often used in orthopedics, are also based on 3D images of the patient and allow for greater precision and accuracy, erasing guesswork.

Decker and Ford are not only imaging experts for our patients, but they also have vast experience imaging mummies. (Yes, you are reading correctly.)

They recently scanned two ancient Egyptian mummies with one of our high-powered 320 slice CT scanners — meaning the machine creates 320 cross-sectional images or “slices” of a body per pass. Next, they created high-resolution 3D computer visualizations of the images and made 3D prints of the men’s spines, skulls and hips, as well as artifacts bundled with one of the bodies. This allowed them to examine the mummies’ bodies in a way that has not been possible since they were wrapped at their time of death thousands of years ago.

The scans, along with accompanying 3D prints, will be on display at the upcoming Mummies of the World: The Exhibition  at the California Science Center, opening Feb. 7.

As for the future of 3D printing, Decker predicts that within the next decade or so, 3D printers will have the capability to print organ reproductions that can be implanted into the body for long periods of time and function as the real thing. Experts are already putting temporary 3D dental implant prints into patients; a pelvis or other tissues may be next.

Medical 3D printing is one of the most dramatic examples of how we push the envelope of what is and what can be. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s routine medical practice, and we are committed to being part of this revolutionary transformation.

Medical 3D prints are revolutionizing surgeries across disciplines throughout the health system — cardiology, transplant, cancer and orthopedics — which may lead to improved patient outcomes.

Rod Hanners, CEO of Keck Medicine of USC

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