A novel solution to manufacturing multi-color medical preoperative models with transparent shells

Preoperative models manufactured by 3D printing technology are widely demanded in surgical procedures. Current printing methods such as Polyjet, color jet printing (CJP) and fused deposition molding (FDM) are either too expensive or of poor performance. In this paper, a novel solution is proposed. Preoperative models are first divided into internal part, such as blood vessel, and the main body. The former is printed in color and the latter is transparent. In particular, the internal part is printed using FDM. A housing template for the main body is generated by digital light processing (DLP) based on the preoperative model. After integrating the template and inner part, transparent elastomer precursor is injected and cured inside the template, leading to the formation of the transparent main body. For demonstration, a liver model is manufactured using the proposed scheme. Compared with the existing methods, our strategy could manufacture preoperative models at both high quality and affordable cost.