The ability to prescribe specific treatments for heart disease pumps up with a procedure to 3D print a soft, flexible model of a patient’s heart. These replica organs closely match the anatomy of each patient’s heart and can be engineered to mimic actual blood pumping ability.

Medical images of a heart are converted into a 3D computer model, which can then be printed using a polymer-based ink. The fabrication method yields a soft, flexible shell in the exact shape of the patient’s own heart and can also be applied to print a patient’s aorta.

Sleeves were also designed to wrap around the printed forms. When connected to a pneumatic system, outflowing air can be manipulated to rhythmically inflate the sleeve’s bubbles and contract the heart, mimicking its pumping action. Constrictions of the sleeve, and consequently of the model heart, can be tuned to mimic aortic stenosis.

A new procedure 3D prints a soft and flexible replica of a patient’s heart. Source: Melanie Gonick, MIT

In the future, doctors could potentially use this technology to first print a patient’s heart and aorta, then implant a variety of valves into the printed model to determine which design results in the best function and fit for that particular patient. The heart replicas could also be used by research labs and the medical device industry as realistic platforms for testing therapies for various types of heart disease.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cleveland Clinic (Ohio) and Harvard University contributed to this development, which is reported in Science Robotics.