The advancement in science and technology has benefited a number of fields but perhaps the field that has benefited the most from this is the medical field. Today we see medical science achieving new breakthroughs all thanks to the advancement and progress made in science and technology. What was once considered to be impossible is now a reality.
3D printer in particular has helped medical science achieve new breakthroughs. Printing of organs isn’t too far away and soon enough surgeries will be carried out that will involve transplantation of 3D printed organs into human body. While the focus is on printing of organs, a team of researchers is working on printing skins. Under the leadership of Dr. Sophie Wuerger at University of Liverpool, U.K., this team is working towards making it possible to print skin which matches the skin of the individual patient. The idea is to come up with a way of 3D printing skin which is natural looking and blends in with the natural skin of the patient. The research is quite challenging since each individual skin has particular characteristics and vary from person to person.
The team has come up with a brilliant methodology for this process. They will use a 3D scanning camera, currently being developed by the same team, to create 3D images of the patient’s natural in different light levels. In the next step this information will be fed to the printer which will enable it to print skin which exactly matches the patient’s skin. Dr. Sophie has high hopes for this project.
The team has also stated that they would create a data bank using these scans which will enable them to pick out a match for a skin where emergency printing is required. The end result would be a skin bank from where patients could select the type of skin they want! Well, fingers crossed, and we wish good luck to this team doing wonderful engineering.