CALGARY—With a small hand gripping each side of the model, 4-year-old Andrew Lebel pulls apart the plastic brain and looks inside.
“Looks like grey spaghetti,” he says, smiling.
But what’s unique about that grey spaghetti is it’s a model of his brain, except half the actual size. It was made by a 3D printer that used images from Andrew’s MRI brain scans, which are being used for research into pediatric brain development.
He’s one of 178 kids aged 2 to 7 years old whose brains have been scanned in an MRI since his mother, Catherine Lebel, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Radiology at the Cumming School of Medicine, and her research assistant, Mercedes Bagshawe, started their study in 2013.
But for the last six months, the research team has been using the data to create 3D models of the participants’ brains as thank-you gifts for co-operating with the tedious and time-consuming scans.
“A kid is not going to appreciate the publication and the scientific knowledge that we get out of the study, but holding their brain in their hand is something really cool,” Catherine Lebel said.
So far, the team has 120 kids with scans that have rendered “high-quality data” for analysis and 60 kids with scans that will work for a 3D print, which is being done by 4G Vision Tech, a Calgary 3D printing centre.
“We’re definitely trying to do something cool for them that makes them excited about the research in a way they can appreciate,” Lebel said.
There have been 14 kids so far who have had their brains printed, though they hope to do more.
“It takes us a while to process the images and print the brains. And we need really high-quality data. So those are the kids with the best-quality data (for 3D printing) and the kids that have happened to return in the time frame of us getting them printed,” she said.
Lebel said she’s grateful they’ve received enough participants for their research, especially considering each session is about 45 minutes, and they’re asked to return every six months.
In any given appointment, the children are checked for metal on their bodies that could be dangerous for the magnetic resonance imaging scanner, changed into scrubs or pyjamas, and instructed to lie down on the scanner’s bed, where a coil is placed on their faces, which Lebel says is like a helmet.
Then they’re slid into the machine, and have to stay extremely still for five-minute increments while the machine does its work. The five-minute scans are repeated until the researchers get about six sets of images. The younger children usually have their parents stand in the room with them.
“They can certainly be claustrophobic for kids or adults. And then it’s loud,” Lebel said.
The data collected from the children’s scans have been used in multiple studies so far.
In one study, researchers looked at how a child’s language abilities are related to brain structure, and how there might be roots of reading problems that can be seen in a child before they even learn to read.
They’ve also looked at maternal depression and pregnancy and the brain outcomes in those children.
“We found some associations between maternal symptoms of depression and child grief,” Lebel said.
“We’ve (also) looked at normal, typical developmental trajectories of brain function and brain structure in the kids and how those change with age.”
Though Lebel said the knowledge gleaned from the scans has been significant to her research, she said the 3D brain replicas are a way to reward her participants with something they might find more interesting.
“We’re really grateful to the families,” Lebel said.
“I think they’ve contributed really significantly to some important science that we’re doing, but we’re hoping that this is a fun way for them to celebrate that.”