3D Printed Models Offer Superior Advantages in Medical Student Education

Three-Dimensional (3D) printing has been increasingly used in medical applications ranging from the original orthopaedic and maxillofacial applications to the emerging areas including tumour and cardiovascular disease [1-10]. Use of patient-specific 3D printed models has been shown to play an important role in cardiovascular disease by replicating anatomical structures and pathologies with high accuracy [9-11]. This is especially useful in the domain of Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) due to complexity of cardiac structures and heterogeneity of heart pathologies which are difficult to be appreciated on traditional image visualizations on a 2D flat screen [10]. 3D printed heart models created from patient's Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) imaging data offer realistic physical models with tactile experience, thus showing great promise in improving understanding of the complex CHD situations (Figure 1).