Academic Researchers

The evolution of university education is transforming the way learning takes place, shifting from traditional methods to immersive technologies such as 3D printing and virtual reality. These tools make it possible to accurately recreate what is currently found in textbooks, atlases, and slides, bringing about a significant transformation—particularly in medical education. PrintMed 3D and Huvant represent strategic partners in delivering excellence in education across the technical, medical, and surgical fields. The Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Medical Radiography Techniques and Radiotherapy fits seamlessly within this framework, training professionals with strong technical, clinical, and operational skills. Thanks to these emerging technologies, future professionals will not only acquire advanced competencies but will also be able to share them with colleagues through increasingly effective, innovative, and engaging teaching methodologies.

I have always been interested in virtual reality and in the development of new technologies that allow young surgeons to gradually acquire new skills, without subjecting the patient to errors dictated by a lack of experience. With the reduction of working hours for doctors in training and the increase in medical-legal cases, we are witnessing a reduction in exposure to surgical cases. This translates into fewer opportunities not only to assist but also to be directly involved as the first operators in the operating room. The primary task of those personally involved in the training of neurosurgeons is to identify new strategies to train a generation that is at least as well-equipped as the previous one. 3D printed models from real cases would make a fundamental contribution to the training of neurosurgeons, allowing current and future generations to acquire surgical skills and improve technical skills in a protected environment where a mistake would not have devastating consequences, but which would instead constitute a constructive experience to be critically analyzed.

One aspect of the Printmed-3d project is the development of a digital workflow that includes the 3d reconstruction (the core) of organs and systems by segmentation from radiological images (ct and mri). the 3d object thus obtained can be placed in an immersive virtual reality environment based on all-in-one head-mounted display devices and also used for the reproduction with 3d printing of "physical" artefacts based on the different textures of the tissues and organs, mimicking its structural density characteristics. this virtual/physical object interaction develops the concept of patient-specific anatomy and therefore of personalized medicine, with a potential impact in the didactic, training and clinical fields (e.g. in preoperative planning).

Lombardy as a leader in personalized medicine and in the creation of models of organs and pathologies to treat patients better, without risk or damage relating to the inexperience of doctors and surgeons.