Consider yourself to be a medical student studying the anatomy of the human skull for the very first time.
You have to identify a small opening through which an important nerve passes, but your plastic replica does not have the said opening, as it was left out during production due to simplification purposes.
Think about the difference between that scenario and the one when you study from a model with all the anatomical structures represented accurately.
Modern 3D printing is facilitating this process.
Importance of Anatomy Models
Medical students do not just study their subjects from textbooks.
They study by:
touching bones
tracking muscle lines
determining anatomical landmarks
understanding how organs relate to one another
By doing so, medical students gain a three-dimensional perspective on the structure of the human body.
If a model is inaccurate, then this study process will be inaccurate as well.
Problem of Traditional Plastic Models
Affordable models of human anatomy are usually made via injection molding.
Injection molding involves melting raw plastic pellets and injecting this liquid at high pressures into a mold cavity where it cools down and solidifies into an exact shape of the mold, thus making very precise and uniform parts suitable for mass production.
This technique is great for making thousands of identical pieces cheaply and quickly.
Nevertheless, there are some limits to it.
Small apertures, deep inner structures, thin walls, or undercuts are hard and expensive to manufacture.
In order to make manufacturing easier, certain details can be simplified.
As a consequence, models lose certain characteristics, such as:
small bone holes
narrow canals
finer bone texture
sharp bone landmarks
inner cavities
Why Are These Features So Significant?
Consider studying geography with the use of a globe on which all the mountains have been flattened.
You would be able to identify the continents.
However, you will not really understand the landscape.
This is true for anatomy as well.
Students frequently depend on both visual and tactile senses.
Touching a certain ridge, groove, or notch allows them to identify specific anatomical structures during future surgeries, diagnostics, and other tasks.
Sometimes, small features distinguish one structure from another.
How 3D Printing Works
Unlike injecting plastic into a mold, 3D printing creates an object through a process where it melts the filament from the nozzle and moves in all directions (X-axis and Y-axis), starting from the plate to the height of zero mm and continues building the model till the final height in Z-axis.
It's as if you are creating thousands of tiny slices stacked upon one another until you get your object.
Since the printer prints the layers based on a digital model, it's capable of producing objects with complex shapes which are hard or almost impossible to produce using traditional molds.
These shapes include:
Winding Canals
Deep Cavities
Tiny Passages
Rough Bone Texture
Thin Structures
Highly Detailed Surfaces
Accuracy Equals More Effective Learning
In the case of medical studies, realism goes beyond visual appearance.
Students must be able to recognize body parts in their real form.
Highly accurate 3D printed models ensure:
higher levels of tactile realism
anatomical landmarks of higher quality
proportions that are closer to reality
preservation of internal anatomical structures
visualization of complex structures
This gives students an opportunity to hone their observation skills.
Example of Realism
For example, there is the human skull.
Injection-molded skull models may simplify or eliminate small details, like foramina and recesses, because they are hard to produce.
On the other hand, highly accurate 3D printed skull models can recreate these structures since the model is built using actual medical imaging.
Students get a chance to observe all necessary details.
Beyond the classroom
Anatomically correct models are not used for teaching purposes alone anymore.
The following are some of the uses of 3D printed models in hospitals and research:
surgical planning
patient education
medical research
practice procedures
device development
This makes the technology extremely useful across all aspects of modern medicine.
Conclusion
When making large quantities of cheap models, injection molding is still a great option.
But when accuracy becomes the key requirement, 3D printing provides many benefits.
In retaining all the complexities of geometry, surface features, and anatomical structure, highly accurate 3D printed models help students learn the subject as close to reality as possible.
As medical education keeps evolving, these high detail models are transforming anatomy laboratories into environments where students can study the subject with more knowledge and precision.
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