Stratasys launches new digital anatomy printer for human models

3D printing company Stratasys has launched the J750 Digital Anatomy 3D Printer – designed to replicate the feel, responsiveness, and biomechanics of human anatomy in medical models.

The system aims to improve surgical preparedness and training while helping bring new medical devices to market faster. Medical professionals have a choice of cadavers, animal, traditional, or virtual reality models which all have significant limitations. Unlike animal models that approximate human anatomy and may raise ethical concerns, or cadaver models that cannot retain live-tissue feel and require a controlled environment, the Digital Anatomy 3D Printer recreates actual tissue response - and can be used anywhere without specialised facilities. It also lets users focus on specific pathologies.

Eyal Miller, Stratasys Healthcare Business Unit head, said: “We believe in the potential of 3D printing to provide better health care, and the Digital Anatomy 3D Printer is a major step forward. We’re giving surgeons a more realistic training environment in no-risk settings. We also anticipate this will enable medical device makers to improve how they bring products to market by performing design verification, validation, usability studies and failure analysis with these new models.”

The new 3D printer has already been tested at several organisations. The Jacobs Institute, a  medical innovation centre focused on accelerating device development in vascular medicine, has been testing the Digital Anatomy 3D Printer to re-create key vascular components for advanced testing and training.

Dr. Adnan Siddiqui, chief medical officer, Jacobs Institute, said: “3D printing has been wonderful for recreating patient-specific anatomy compared to cadavers or animal models; however, the final frontier for organ model realism has been live-tissue feel and biomechanical realism. That’s exactly what the Digital Anatomy 3D Printer gives us. We believe these models give us the best opportunity to recreate human physiological conditions to simulate actual clinical situations and to study new devices to establish their effectiveness before introducing them to patients.”

In conjunction with the 3D printer itself, Stratasys is also introducing three new materials – TissueMatrix, GelMatrix, and BoneMatrix - used to create cardiac, vascular, and orthopedic 3D printing applications. A Blood Vessel Cleaning Station that removes support material from inside 3D-printed blood vessels is also being released.

The new Stratasys 3D printer is expected to see adoption primarily by medical device companies, and academic medical centres – which are under increasing pressure to conduct training outside of the operating room to minimise risk to patients. The solution also supports efforts to move from time-based surgical training to proficiency-based evaluation.