3D printers may reduce animal numbers to train neuroengineering procedures

Author

Pohl, B.M. ; Gasca, Fernando ; Christ, O. ; Hofmann, U.G.

Author_Institution

Inst. for Signal Processine, Univ. of Luebeck, Luebeck, Germany

fYear

2013

fDate

6-8 Nov. 2013

Firstpage

887

Lastpage

890

Abstract

Neuroengineering related interventions to small animals always carry the high risk of missled procedures, frequently causing premature death of the animal. In this paper the manufacturing process to build a physical rat skull and brain model for educational use is presented. Out of MRI images a rat brain was segmented to build a negative mould. This form was used to cast an agarose rat brain. For an accompanying rat neurocranium model, CT images were rendered to a surface mesh and printed in 3D out of PLA. The presented workflow results in a high detailed rat skull and rat brain.

Keywords

biomedical MRI; brain models; computerised tomography; image segmentation; medical image processing; neurophysiology; programmable logic arrays; rendering (computer graphics); three-dimensional printing; 3D printers; CT image rendering; MRI image segmentation; PLA; agarose rat brain; animal numbers; educational use; manufacturing process; negative mould; neurocranium model; neuroengineering procedure training; physical rat brain model; physical rat skull; premature death; surface mesh; Animals; Bones; Brain modeling; Skull; Software; Solid modeling; Three-dimensional displays;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Neural Engineering (NER), 2013 6th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

1948-3546

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NER.2013.6696077

Filename

6696077