Medical image processing @ Research Platforms

Post by: Jasamine Coles-Black

Hello everyone! I’m Jas, your new Research Community Coordinator for 3D Slicer at Research Platforms.

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I first came into contact with Research Platforms via 3D Med, a joint collaboration in medical 3D printing with Austin Health, founded by ResPlat legend Paul Mignone and vascular surgeon Jason Chuen. This initiative included the “3D Printing for Medical Applications Seminar”, and led me to enrol in Louise van der Werff’s 3D Slicer Alpha workshop last year. For those of you who don’t know, 3D Slicer is a software package for image analysis and scientific visualisation. The best part? It’s free!

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A kidney tumour model segmented from a patient’s CT scan at Austin Health using 3D Slicer, to aid presurgical planning. Watch this space for the 3D printed end result!

Just a little bit about my background. I’m an aspiring surgeon in my final year at Melbourne Medical School. It was this interest in surgery that led to me to discover the medical applications of 3D printing, which are varied and far ranging, and all equally amazing.

Some pretty inspiring examples in the literature would include bioengineering and tissue engineering, interventional planning, medical and surgical training, anatomy teaching, customised prostheses and implantable components, patient education, and forensic medicine.

As someone with who struggles with Microsoft Word, and had no previous medical image processing experience, this for me was truly diving off the deep end. For someone of my background, the promised land was truly far, far away. And like many clinicians, I was initially unsure about how much benefit medical image processing could truly bring to my research.

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This leads me to my point - while there seems to be a huge amount of enthusiasm for the applications of 3D printing in the wider medical community, a significant barrier remains. Despite their enthusiasm, clinicians often lack the technical skills required to segment medical images and 3D print models of their patient’s anatomy.

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A generalised 3D printing workflow for medical models.image

The generalised 3D printing workflow conundrum facing clinicians.

Following this initial experience, I continued to collaborate with Research Platforms as a Helper for 3D Slicer. It was during this time that I truly began to appreciate what Research Platforms was all about – namely, free training to help you do your research better, with as few barriers as possible.

This too, has been my goal with the 3D Med initiative based at Austin Health – information and technical know-how about medical image processing and 3D printing should be made available to as many clinicians as possible who are interested in applying this technology to their research.

Surgeons as a whole have a pervasive reputation for being luddites. While this can sometimes be true, the 2016 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Annual Scientific Congress in Brisbane set out to change this perception, with the theme “Surgery, Technology and Communication”.

I’ve just returned to Melbourne, fresh faced and inspired by the work of the myriad of amazing local and international speakers invited to present at the congress. Themes that were raised during this conference included big data and data management, novel methods of teaching trainee surgeons, virtual and augmented reality, and 3D printing (if you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s kind of my personal interest).

Other fascinating topics that were raised included the use of robotics and simulation in surgery, with processed medical images being used as the inputs for the surgical robots to do their thing.

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Is it just me, or does it seem as though more surgeons ought to be visiting us here at Research Platforms? :D

Soooooooooooooooooooo… What can you do for me, Jas?

Well, I’m glad you asked! As one of the Research Community Coordinators for 3D Slicer, I’ve been tasked with upskilling the medical research community in medical image processing, 3D modelling, and 3D printing. At Research Platforms we’re also all about collaboration and network building. In essence, I’d also like to put you in touch with other individuals with similar interests, but complementary skill sets, so you can scratch each other’s backs like happy lab monkeys.

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Scratch that collaborative research itch!

And to all 3D Slicer course alumni: how have you been using 3D Slicer in your research? Having attended the introductory 3D Slicer for Beginners course, have you got any suggestions for intermediate/advanced extension courses that’ll help you do your research better? We’d love to hear from you!

I can be reached at: jasaminecb@gmail.com or send a tweet my way @jasaminecb - I look forward to hearing from you!