medical imaging 3d printing

Mark posted some info on getting stl's from CT scans on Milwaukee Makerspace the other day. You can see his post with the image above here, and you can see the post about his print here. I wanted to save the info from the message board though for future cataloging for my students and my own research, so I copied the thread below for future reference. I think this might come in handy some day.

There is an open source project called DeVide that allows rapid conversion of Dicom CT scan images to .stl format meshes: 

Here's a demo: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PtTpRz3aU8

Here's the project page: 

https://code.google.com/p/devide/wiki/Downloads?tm=2

Looks a little complicated to learn, but for extracting bones from dicom data sets, duplicating the process in the video demo may do the trick. 

I have been trying to use Slicer (no, not slic3r) to do the job, but it seems they've taken the stl export out of it in recent releases. Someone on a forum said that if you export a vtk file with Slicer, then open that file (again with Slicer) you can save as an stl but I haven't figured out how to load a vtk file. Meh.. 

Have you looked into Osirix? Apparently, they can export STL files from DICOM datasets.... 

I found it via this slideshow: 

http://www.slideshare.net/kkpandya/3d-visualization-of-dicom-datasets-using-a-makerbot#btnNext

Then looked a little deeper: http://www.osirix-viewer.com/AboutOsiriX.html

And they list STL export under previous versions in their roadmap here: 

http://www.osirix-viewer.com/Roadmap.html

I also found someteing interesting here: 

http://blendersushi.blogspot.com/2012/01/data-question-on-point-cloud-and-voxel.html

Osirix only runs on Mac OS. 

I am currently trying to do this at GE. I was able to print a skull from our new CT scanner on our replicator. I used SimpleWare by ANSYS on a 30 day trial. Its quite nice. The research center guys also recommended some open source options. ITK and its cousin VTK. Also heard Osirix is good. 

By the way. we just launched the product @ RSNA in chicago. I've been working on it for 3 years. Its called the Revolution CT. It spins 5 times a second on an induction powered gantry. I was on the small team that implemented the algorithms that did the bone corrections.

I just went through the youtube demo with DeVide on a downloaded Dicom dataset and it works beautifully! 

I did, however, find this site which appears to aggregate free medical imaging software: http://www.idoimaging.com/