J Korean Assoc Oral Maxillofac Surg.  1999 Oct;25(4):295-303.

Accuracy Tests of 3D Rapid Prototyping (RP) Medical Models: Its Potential and Clinical Applications

• Choi JY
• Choi JH
• Kim NK
• Lee JK
• Kim MK
• Kim MJ
• Kim YH

Abstract

Presented in this paper are the experimental results that measure rapid prototyping (RP) errors in 3D medical models. We identified various factors that can cause dimensional errors when producing RP models, specifically in maxillofacial areas. For the experiment, we used a human dry skull. A number of linear measurements based on landmarks were first obtained on the skull. This was followed by CT scanning, 3D model reconstruction, and RP model fabrication. The landmarks were measured again on both the reconstructed models and the physical RP models, and these were compared with those on dry skull. We focused on major sources of errors, such as CT scanning, conversion from CT data to STL models, and RP model fabrication. The results show that the overall error from skull to RP is 0.64+/-0.36mm(0.71+/-0.66%) in absolute value. This indicates that the RP technology can be acceptable in the real clinical applications. A clinical case that has applied RP models successfully for treatment planning and surgical rehearsal is presented. Although the use of RP models is rare in the medical area yet, we believe RP is promising in that it has a great potential in developing new tools which can aid diagnosis, treatment planning, surgical rehearsal, education, and so on.

Keyword

Rapid Prototyping; 3D Medical Models; Accuracy

MeSH Terms

Diagnosis
Education
Humans
Skull
Tomography, X-Ray Computed