This invention relates to inks for use in 3D printers and, more specifically, radio-opaque 3D printing inks.
In the new world of 3D printing seemingly everything is possible. However, like the internet of 20 years ago, the applications of this technology are being worked out day by day to address the specifics of each imagined use. This patent application describes an innovation that furthers the ability to authentically reproduce human anatomy in printed training replicas for health care professionals.
All surgical skills to date have required neophyte surgeons to practice on human patients with oversight from trained colleague preceptors. There are two significant deficits in this method of procedural training. First, the process inescapably involves learning by failures as well as successful clinical outcomes, many times with serious consequences to the patients who have been used in this teaching environment. Second is the severe limitation of a one-on-one requirement to transfer these procedural skills, making it exorbitantly expensive as well as exclusive in the numbers of professionals who are able to acquire these skills.
The advent of multi-ink 3D printers offers an elegant solution to these worldwide problems—the possibility of replicating human anatomy in ways that can authentically mimic the procedural experiences surgeons require to become competent in their fields. Such replicas are advantageous because they reduce patient mortality and morbidity usually attendant to procedural training by taking humans out of the learning process every procedural clinician must go through to achieve competence in their given field of expertise. At the same time, the replicas allow the training of a much larger number of clinicians, thereby reducing the costs and increasing the availability of medical and dental procedures.
As an example, dentistry, specifically endodontics, has been served through the replication of external and internal tooth anatomy—see e.g. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/017,225, Anatomic Apparatus and Training System for Remote and Interactive Hands-On Procedural Training for Dentists, hereby incorporated by reference herein—by way of 3D printing. 3D printing is uniquely capable of reproducing the nuances of root canal morphology, a process that injection molding cannot adequately accomplish as there is no way to recreate the microscopic and often tortuous anatomy inside of human and animal teeth.
However, as closely as 3D printing with ultraviolet (“UV”)-cured polymers is able to reproduce hard tissue anatomy, before now these anatomic replicas have had very different properties than human hard tissue in their radio-opacity. While clinicians can gain skills by directly viewing the action of instruments and filling materials within root canal spaces, the final connection of that experience to real life clinical situations has been hampered by the nearly radio-lucent nature of the polymer inks used in their printing. There is a need for anatomic replicas that mimic organic hard tissue when subject to X-ray imaging.