You want to spend $10,000+ to "debug" your skeleton, and you're currently stuck on the easiest part of that entire process?
I think a new hobby is probably the best option here...
Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#22You could also print your brain: https://www.sculpteo.com/blog/2017/11/08/how-to-3d-print-you...
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#23MRI may work... I think there's a skeletal MRI. That will be extremely expensive. CT scan probably would work, but I don't think they'll let you dose yourself with that many X-Rays for fun. Most of these scanners give you voxel data, which you can then threshold some way and generate a water-tight surface which can be turned into an STL and 3D printed The best 3D printer probably uses a stereolithography process. The…
> I don't think they'll let you dose yourself with that many X-Rays for fun. There are companies that will let you get a "baseline" CT scan so that you can compare it with a future scan to see if something has changed. I don't think many doctors recommend this for the general public (because of the high radiation dose), but it does seem to be an available service and not prohibited by the FDA or something. A CT scan…
The FDA barely prevents people injecting themselves with snakeoil stem cell treatments...
"Baseline" CT smells like an expensive solution looking for a problem to sell to hypochondriacs. A hefty dose of ionizing radiation for no clear medical benefit gets a thumb down from me.
MRIs are nearly perfectly safe though.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#24I've 3D printed my brain - I'm a biomedical engineer, and for a while was working for a research institute in France. While there, I had many friends and acquaintances who were doctors or surgeons performing their own research work. I had made noises in the past that I really wanted to print my brain sometime, so one of them referred me to an observational study in the area using fMRI to observe the brain performing…
That's awesome! Thank you very much for sharing your experience and explaining the processes involved in detail.
From my light research, it seems that obtaining such scan would be costly ($1k-$5k price range for full body scan without a health insurance).
I will reach out to local universities to check if they can aid me in this or if I can do this over time, piece by piece.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think they'll let you dose yourself with that many X-Rays for fun. There are companies that will let you get a "baseline" CT scan so that you can compare it with a future scan to see if something has changed. I don't think many doctors recommend this for the general public (because of the high radiation dose), but it does seem to be an available service and not prohibited by the FDA or something. A CT scan…
The FDA barely prevents people injecting themselves with snakeoil stem cell treatments... "Baseline" CT smells like an expensive solution looking for a problem to sell to hypochondriacs. A hefty dose of ionizing radiation for no clear medical benefit gets a thumb down from me. MRIs are nearly perfectly safe though.
Yeah, I have the same feeling about the baseline CT service and I'm sorry I wasn't more forthright about it above.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#26A decent and cheap 3d printer with a large build volume would be the Creality CR-10s. You could print it using PETG filament.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there's a market in medical education for precise models of different body parts with one-click ordering from model->3D production->shipping to your education facility. This is distinct from the efforts of facilities who are using 3D manufacturing to create patient models on site for surgery planning.
Why 3D print if it's just going to be for education, not individualized patient models?
Ya know, I suppose in an ideal world you drive down the cost of on site manufacturing so you could spit out any model you wanted in the classroom. Want a healthy kidney? Boom, done. Want an organ that has a specific issue for a particular ailment being studied? Out it comes.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#28You want to spend $10,000+ to "debug" your skeleton, and you're currently stuck on the easiest part of that entire process? I think a new hobby is probably the best option here...
I appreciate your candid critique. I did not know the cost nor the steps involved in doing this. Also, by "debugging" I meant to find discrepancies or signs of abnormalities (if any) by having a model skeleton on hand.
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#29If you get an mri or ct scan you can use this package to segment the bones and the convert the image slices to 3D geometry. https://www.gibboncode.org/ It’s open source, but uses matlab which is not free if you are not at a university. It will also take a while...
Thank you, this is helpful!
Re: Ask HN: How can I 3D print my skeleton for research?
#30A decent and cheap 3d printer with a large build volume would be the Creality CR-10s. You could print it using PETG filament.
Thanks! I will check it out.