The World’s First High-Resolution 3D Printing Brain Phantom

We are increasingly encountering 3D printing in the medical field for the production of organs. For example, in the case of the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who produced the first functional 3D printed human brain tissue. Now there has been yet another example, as Viennese researchers have developed what they claim to be the world’s first high-resolution 3D-printed brain phantom. The researchers hope it will be useful for further research into neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis as well as for planning operations.

The breakthrough was achieved as part of a collaboration between the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). The model of the 3D printed brain, which the scientists also call a “brain phantom”, hardly resembles a real brain visually, as it is shaped in a cube and is significantly smaller. Inside, however, the model contains tiny water-filled microchannels that mimic cranial nerves and are only a fifth of the size of a human hair.

Photo Credits: MedUni Vienna

The purpose of the model is to imitate the structure of brain nerve fibers and to visualize them using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), a special form of MRI. MRI is used in particular to examine the structure and function of the brain, and dMRI can even be used to identify the direction of nerve fibers in the brain. The 3D-printed brain phantom will now help to optimize the dMRI procedure and test analysis and evaluation methods. This should prove useful, as the direction of the nerve fibers has been very difficult to determine up to now, due to the fact that nerve fibers moving in different directions overlap at crossing points of nerve fiber bundles.