3D Printed Modeling: A Novel Hands-On Learning Tool for Craniosynostosis in Medical Education

Purpose: Learning complex pathoanatomy among medical students is often limited to 2D radiological imaging, which forces many to conceptualize abnormal structures in a 3D perception. Craniosynostosis is a rare and complex disease involving facial and orbital bones and cranial deformity. Learning this disease's surgical correction and pathology is often complicated, requiring various 3D abstractions of anatomical views around the skull. With the emergence of 3D printing technology, we aim to enhance the medical students' learning experience by designing our own 3D craniosynostosis model to be used as a hands-on learning tool.

Methods/Materials: Creating a 3D structure includes acquiring image data, extracting the chosen region of interest, transforming the data from volumetric to a 3D triangular mesh, and transferring the data to a 3D printer for production. The program utilized to isolate CT scan data is called “3D Slicer”. This platform is for analyzing and understanding medical image data. Slicer allows powerful medical image processing, visualization, and data analysis tools. Depending on the intended application, various materials can be used to print 3D models; PLA standard plastic was utilized for these models.

Results: Utilizing these 3D models will be essential to hands-on learning and the application of innovative education to medical school students. However, while 3D printing is an innovative method of visualizing pathologies, the technique has key limitations that must be addressed. Newborn skulls tend to be thin and sometimes will cause problems with printing the 3D models. The usage of patient data also calls into question ethical considerations, in addition to time and effort.

Conclusions: 3D models should be considered for use in fostering an enhanced education amongst medical students. Doing so would be essential to hands-on learning, especially with complicated first-year topics such as anatomy, and provide a forefront to learning pathologies in upcoming school curricula. We hope these models will benefit medical students' learning experience by enhancing their skills, productivity, and familiarity with pathological anatomy over time.