Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Researchers training tomorrow’s medical and allied-health professionals are bridging the gap between anatomy textbooks and cadavers by creating photorealistic, 3D-printed replicas of dissected body parts.
The 3D printing program in the Centre for Human Anatomy Education at Melbourne’s Monash University has been working on practical applications of 3D imaging and printing in anatomical education for more than a decade.
Their latest study, published in Future Science OA, details the effort to turn human tissue “prosections” into durable and photorealistic resin replicas.
A prosection is the detailed dissection of a cadaver or part of a cadaver, such as a limb, thorax, or abdomen, which is used to demonstrate anatomical structures to students.
“Someone spent a lot of time, sometimes months, getting a model to show the perfect nerve or the perfect artery or the perfect muscle group,” first author of the paper and Monash PhD candidate, Lucy Costello, told Cosmos.
“It’s very fragile. If you have hundreds of students a day coming through the space, touching and poking things … we need to preserve them.
“So, in the beginning the idea was, how can we keep these forever in a way that makes sense and honours the model that they are?”
Their first attempt in 2014 used computed tomography (CT) data to create the 3D replicas.
“CT is in black and white, and the resulting model geometry has no colour so someone had to sit there and digitally paint those specimens,” says Costello.
They used a standardised colour palette to falsely colour the models like anatomy textbooks – red for arteries, blue for veins, and yellow for nerves. But, while these shortcuts are helpful for students learning anatomical concepts, photorealistic models can provide a closer match to the reality of human tissue.
Technological advances in 3D surface scanning and 3D printing in the decade since have now allowed the team to achieve this.
They used a hand-held 3D scanner to collect the prosection’s geometry (it’s shape) and texture (the real colour of the specimen). Then, they used a third generation UV curable resin 3D printer to make models in photorealistic colours by mixing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, White and Clear inks.
In total, they produced 59 anatomical replicas spanning several body regions. In some, they overlaid transparent false colour to slightly augment key structures, such as blood vessels, nerves, and unique anatomy.
Last week the Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-2025 identified 3D printing as a key technology to impact in the Australian health system in the coming year, with applications ranging from custom-made prosthetics and implants to surgical models of a patient’s unique anatomy.
This recent research highlights yet another application: making exact copies of human donor material available to medical and allied health educators where real tissues are not an accessible option, for example, in peripheral or rural medical school locations and in teaching hospitals and clinical environments.
“Anatomy teaching is different at every university. Even within our university there are different rules and regulations in each of the campuses. So having something like this is usable in any space,” says Costello.
“The privilege that we have is to create these exciting models and step into the classroom and really see the impacts that they can have on people’s education. I think that’s the magic, not so much the technology.”
