Anatomic 3D Synthetic Tissue Printer for Medical Training

Military medical personnel are not prepared to provide trauma care to severely injured soldiers in wartime due to inadequate and unrealistic battlefield training opportunities during peacetime. Training has historically been done on human cadavers and live animals, but cadavers are in limited supply, and animal rights groups and physicians are increasing pressure to end the practice of using live animals. Anatomically-accurate, high-fidelity mannequins have thus become more and more widely adopted as legitimate medical education tools. Seraph Robotics proposes to develop a solid freeform fabrication (SFF) method of creating medical simulation devices for training combat medical personnel in battlefield surgical techniques. Such devices would be superior to current patient simulator mannequins because they would be made of materials that are more similar to human bodies, and they could be designed to bleed like human bodies. This Phase I project would develop methods for the heterogeneous printing of objects with desired anisotropic material properties; develop methods for the SFF of structures that are pre-stressed in a controlled manner; develop methods for producing objects that are infusible with liquids for the simulation of capillaries and larger blood vessels; and develop a composite anatomical simulant for bone, muscle, adipose tissue, fascia and skin.