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BabySteps: 3D Printing Using Slicer for creating clubfoot casts
Key Investigators
- Pooneh Roshanitabrizi, Children’s National
- Hadi Fooladi, Children’s National
- Steve Pieper, Isomics, Inc.
- Kevin Cleary, Children’s National
- Anuradha Dayal, Children’s National
Project Description
About 1-2 in every 1000 babies are born with what’s called clubfoot, the most common skeletal deformity in children.
Clubfoot is well treated using a plaster casting method developed in the 1960s, but there is a potential to use 3D scanning and printing techniques to make the process more efficient and cost-effective. Also easier activities of daily living for families with plastic instead of plaster casts.
Objective
- Ideal system would take a surface scan of baby’s foot, either with phone or custom camera
- Computer would generate sequence of cast shapes customized to baby
- 3D printing models would be exported (STL) for generating custom casts
Approach and Plan
- 3D Scanning of the clubfoot cast
- Loading the 3D model into Slicer
- Selecting anatomical landmark points on the 3D model
- Deforming the clubfoot 3D model through provided controls and widgets for printing next cast
- 3D printing the deformed clubfoot model
- Repeating the process until printing the normal cast
Evaluation
Illustrations
