A 24-year-old man met with a vehicular accident and fractured his hip. The reduction of this fracture was difficult because it was located on the posterior side and also one of the smallest fractured piece had been grossly dislocated, thus hampering the normal process. Though a 3 D CT scan showed a small piece but it could not delineate its origin. A RP model of the same enabled the doctors to locate the origin of the piece and a few pre-operative trials were done on the model to arrive at its proper orientation thus reducing the surgery time and possibly avoiding further surgeries as well.

In recent years, Rapid Prototyping has gained extensive acceptance in industry owing to a large number of its applications and benefits. Apart from providing the necessary edge in the field of industrial engineering, another aspect of Rapid Prototyping is its contribution to the field of medicine. Medical researchers and RP scientists working together have successfully produced artificial bones, sockets, brain implants, and even artificial ears. With high speed 3D laser based scanners, limbs can now be digitized in seconds, converted into a solid model in minutes and fabricated in a few hours.

Patient being scanned		2D Scanned Image
3D image on screen or print		3D Plastic Model

Medical Modeling Service is now being provided in India by a Mumbai based company, Protosys. The service enables a 2 D image data from CT/MRI machines to be converted into a 3-dimensional model. The accuracy of these models is approximately within 0.5 mm and they can also be determined as an extension of the "3 D imaging" concept to "3 D printing". The models provide a near-to-real picture of the trauma and thus serve as an excellent tool for visualization, communications, surgery rehearsals and design to custom implants in critical and very complex cases. These include incidents of Dislocations, Deformities, Fractures, Tumours etc., in the areas of Orthopaedic, Neuro, Plastic, Cosmetic, & Oncology including Paediatrics. The surgeons can now formulate their procedures well in advance and also perform dummy operations on these models thereby reducing the number of trials in complicated cases and minimizing chances of surgical errors. Based on the first model, Protosys can also provide about 10 to 50 replicas of the traumatic cases that the surgeon can use later to present/teach various surgical procedures at the institutions or special workshops. By bringing the medical modeling service to India, Protosys has provided an additional tool for advanced surgical needs to the progressive Indian surgeons.

Now, in highly complicated cases of Dislocations, Deformities, Fractures, Tumours etc., in the areas of Orthopaedic, Neuro, Plastic, Cosmetic & Oncology including Paediatrics, Surgeons can easily and even Pre-operatively :

	Visualise / Communicate more details
	Plan / Rehearse the Surgical Procedures
	Reduce Surgery time & iterations
	Design Custom Implants.