Medical Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing: Status and Outlook

Rapid Prototyping (RP) has been considered, over the last decades, as a highly promising technology for reducing product development time and cost, as well as for addressing the need for customization and faster response to the market needs. Nowadays this technology is also used widely in medical applications (Medical Rapid Prototyping – MRP), supporting diagnosis and treatment in Neurosurgery, Orthopedic and Dental-Cranio-Maxillo-Facial surgery as well as in Tissue Engineering. The scan data that are usually obtained by Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) are used to build a 3D CAD model of the patient’s pathological region. The 3D model is used to construct the real size prototype using one of the existing RP processes. This assists surgeons in gaining a detailed insight of the problem, making the diagnosis and treatment easier and more reliable. This study presents the current benefits and barriers of Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing methods and applications in the field of medicine. Most of the recent state-of-art developments and case studies of MRP are presented. Their limitations are discussed along with the challenges to be addressed in the future.