3D printed kidney models help determine doses for nuclear medicine

Nuclear medicine, an area of medicine which involves the application of radioactive substances to the body, can be a crucial part of diagnosing and determining the seriousness of a patient’s disease. Predictably, however, the use of radioactive equipment also comes with certain risks. Radiation can be harmful to the body, so a crucial part of nuclear medicine has been to control and reduce the amount of radioactive materials that are injected into the body, whether orally or intravenously. And that’s where 3D printing comes into play: A team of researchers from the University of Würzburg in Germany has demonstrated how 3D printed organ models could have an important role in testing dosage amounts of radioactive materials for clinical prototyping. Read more.