London-based design studio Cellule has devised a system for creating personalised digital and 3D-printed models of hearts, which can be used to help doctors plan surgery for transplant patients. Initiated in September 2017, Big Heart Data explores the role of 3D printing and parametric modelisation in heart surgery, and its potential to create a customisable and personal healthcare system for individual patients. By harnessing recent innovations in imaging and modelisation technologies, researchers and doctors can now see computational models and hold and 3D-printed models of their patients’ unique and individual hearts. In turn these models can be used to help develop new and personalised treatments for people with heart failure. “For the first time, we are able to use computer models to predict how effective different treatments will be, and new MRI techniques are being used to create 3D-printed anatomically correct models of individual patient’s hearts for preoperative planning,” she continued. The hearts are printed using a renewable bio-based PLA plastic directly derived from sugarcane. “The combination of geometrical and computational models of the heart with 3D printing has the potential to allow for bespoke surgical and interventional devices,” said Bazin.

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