Patent ID: 11872764
Assignee: THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Field: Other special machines (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B  A | IPC B  G

Claim 8:
9. A system for 3D printing from multi-dimensional images, the system comprising:
at least one processor; and
a 3D printing converter implemented on the at least one processor and configured to perform operations comprising:
receiving at least one multi-dimensional image of a structure, wherein receiving the multi-dimensional image of the structure comprises receiving a magnetic resonance (MR) image or a computed tomographic (CT) image of a structure of a patient, wherein receiving the multi-dimensional image of the structure comprises pre-processing the multi-dimensional image to generate a binary image;
for each two dimensional (2D) slice of a plurality of 2D slices of the multi-dimensional image, converting, row-by-row for each row of a plurality of rows of the 2D slice, voxels of the 2D slice into 3D printing instructions for the 2D slice, wherein converting voxels of each 2D slice into 3D printing instructions comprises converting visual image intensity data in the MR image or CT image of the structure of the patient to structural density information for 3D printing, wherein the structural density information for 3D printing specifies that different regions of the 2D slice have different levels of structural material density; and
3D printing a physical model based on the structure by 3D printing, slice by slice, each 2D slice using the 3D printing instructions, including performing variable density printing using the structural density information.