Radiotherapists are using 3D printed heads to practice cancer treatments before doing the real thing.
With the approach a person undergoing radiotherapy first has a CT scan to image their brain, tumour and surrounding bone and facial structure.
This is then turned into a life-sized replica of their skull and facial appearance using a technique that converts sequential CT images into a 3D structure. The model is made from a 3D-printed material that absorbs and scatters the radiation used for radiotherapy in the same way as human tissues.
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The models were approved as safe to use by the US Food and Drug Administration last year and are now being used to treat patients in Greece.
Treating brain cancer is notoriously tricky, as being just a few millimetres off can cause damage to healthy brain tissue.
With radiotherapy high doses of radiation are targeted to kill cancerous cells, but minimise damage to surrounding areas. To get this right, radiologists have to take into account a person鈥檚 anatomy and the size and shape of their tumour.
鈥淭he aim is to focus a large number of very small radiation beams so they can converge exactly on the spot where the brain tumour is,鈥� says Evangelos Pappas at RTSafe, a firm in Athens that has developed the technique.
Using the models, radiologists can have a trial run of treating the tumour and make any necessary tweaks before actually performing the treatment. Each one is filled with water and contains inserts which detect the dose of radiation being delivered in precise locations within the head.
鈥淭he medical team treats this head as if it is a living patient,鈥� says Pappas. It allows doctors to simulate the planned dose of treatment and verify that the radiation will target the tumour and not any vital structures nearby, such as the brainstem or the optical nerve.
