Making three-dimensional echocardiography more tangible: a workflow for three-dimensional printing with echocardiographic data

Azad Mashari; Mario Montealegre-Gallegos; Ziyad Knio; Lu Yeh; Jelliffe Jeganathan; Robina Matyal; Kamal R Khabbaz; Feroze Mahmood

doi:10.1530/ERP-16-0036

Making three-dimensional echocardiography more tangible: a workflow for three-dimensional printing with echocardiographic data

Echo Res Pract. 2016 Dec;3(4):R57-R64. doi: 10.1530/ERP-16-0036. Epub 2016 Dec 14.

Authors

Azad Mashari^{1

2}, Mario Montealegre-Gallegos², Ziyad Knio³, Lu Yeh^{2

4}, Jelliffe Jeganathan², Robina Matyal², Kamal R Khabbaz³, Feroze Mahmood²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesia and Pain Management, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
² Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
³ Division of Cardiac Surgery, Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
⁴ Department of Anesthesiology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a rapidly evolving technology with several potential applications in the diagnosis and management of cardiac disease. Recently, 3D printing (i.e. rapid prototyping) derived from 3D transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) has become possible. Due to the multiple steps involved and the specific equipment required for each step, it might be difficult to start implementing echocardiography-derived 3D printing in a clinical setting. In this review, we provide an overview of this process, including its logistics and organization of tools and materials, 3D TEE image acquisition strategies, data export, format conversion, segmentation, and printing. Generation of patient-specific models of cardiac anatomy from echocardiographic data is a feasible, practical application of 3D printing technology.

Keywords: 3D printing; patient-specific models; rapid prototyping; transesophageal echocardiography.

Publication types

Review