Medical applications of additive manufacturing

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is also known as “3D printing.” AM creates the physical model by construction of succeeding layers using the input material. Each succeeding layer is attached to the preceding layer to form the physical AM model. Medical industry requires the error-free exact anatomy of the patient for diagnosis, surgical planning, surgical guides, implants, etc. Since every patient has unique anatomy, AM suits as best fit for medical industry. AM medical model provides advantage of customizing each model according to the patient’s specific requirement, which is not so easy in conventional way. The current work aims to explain the importance of AM medical model in the medical industry for various scenarios.