3D Printing Advances Cerebral Aneurysm Research0 pages

Customer Case Study
3D Printing Advances Cerebral Aneurysm Research
“We are all going to be surprised by the incredible
number of places that 3D printing fits into both
medicine and medically-oriented research.”
- Dr David H. Frakes, Principal Investigator – Image Processing
Applications Laboratory, Arizona State University

The numbers are stark: Cerebral aneurysms affect 1 in 50 people and contribute to nearly 20,000
deaths in the USA alone every year. If an aneurysmal sac ruptures in the brain it becomes a highly
lethal condition with a 50% mortality rate per rupture.
Arizona State University hosts one of the leading programs in cerebral
aneurysm research with funding provide in part by the Mayo Clinic
and National Science Foundation, among others. ASU’s research
findings are directly applied at participating hospital partners and in
the design of improved endovascular medical devices .

Wax Model

Polyurethane Mold

Fluid Dynamics Testing

“The Solidscape machine is the heart, backbone of our process. We
use that to build the core blood vessel models that we then translate
into transparent flow models for our experiments,” according to Dr.
David Frakes.
“The end product of our physical 3D modeling stage is a transparent
block wherein there is a lost-core or a hollow portion of the model
that is an exact replica of a cerebral aneurysm from a person. Rapid
prototyping is how we get that first positive, before we get the
negative, which is the flow model,” explains Dr. Frakes.
“All of the ground-truth data that is informing our simulations in the
end, it comes from these models that the Solidscape machine helps us
build.”

Customer Profile
The Image Processing
Applications Laboratory
(IPALab) at Arizona State
University addresses current
and important image
processing problems in a
variety of different fields.
Ongoing research at IPALab
includes projects that are
biomedical, industrial, and
military in nature. The
ultimate goal is to improve
human quality of life through
the development and use of
advanced image processing.
www.ipalab.fulton.asu.edu

Solidscape System
Specifications
Printer: R66®PLUS
Software: ModelWorks®
Materials:
• plusCAST™ - Build
• Indura®Fill - Support

Solidscape®, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of high-precision 3D printers, materials and software for Rapid
Prototyping and Manufacturing, able to print solid wax models designed in CAD for investment casting.
Solidscape®, Inc. | 316 Daniel Webster Highway, Merrimack, NH 03054-4115 USA | www.solid-scape.com