3D Printing is gaining influence in the medical field, as it gives surgeons and doctors a more precise understanding of what is going on within a patient. It seems there is another exciting advancement in this area every day. In this instance, a 3D imaging expert helps spare his wife invasive surgery with the use of a 3D print.

In the summer of 2013, Pamela Shavaun Scott started having “24/7 severe headaches” — so severe that she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t before December that she heard for sure that it was a brain tumor.Initially, when Scott had an MRI, radiologists seemed unconcerned when they discovered a mass over an inch in diameter. About three months later, after another MRI, doctors said that it had ballooned about half a centimeter, a sign of malignance. Scott’s husband, Michael Balzer, requested her DICOM files, which are commonly used for medical imaging.

Balzer began experimenting with 3D imaging technology from other parts of the world. Using a tool called InVesalius — open-source software from Brazil that uses DICOM, MRI and CT files to visualize medical images — as well as another imaging software 3D Slicer, he was able to create renderings of his wife’s tumor. The couple sent them out to hospitals across the country around February, Balzer said. How a man used 3D printing to help treat his wife’s brain tumor