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Updated: Jan 4, 2026
A Personalized 3D-Printed Model for Preoperative Evaluation in Thyroid Surgery
Published on: February 17, 2023
Usefulness of a 3D-Printed Thyroid Cancer Phantom for Clinician to Patient Communication
Dayeong Hong1, Sangwook Lee1, Taehun Kim1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Asan Medical Institute of Convergence Science and Technology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, 88 Olympic-ro 43-gil, Songpa-gu, Seoul, 05505, Korea.
Background:
Thyroid glands and surrounding structures are very complex, and this complexity can pose a challenge for clinicians when explaining and communicating to the patient the details of a proposed surgery for thyroid cancer. A three-dimensional (3D) thyroid cancer model could help and improve this communication.
Methods:
A 3D-printed phantom of a thyroid gland and its presenting cancer was produced from segmented head and neck contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) data from a patient with thyroid cancer. The phantom reflects the complex anatomy of the arteries, veins, nerves, and other surrounding organs, and the printing materials and techniques were adjusted to represent the texture and color of the actual structures. Using this phantom, patients and clinicians completed surveys on the usefulness of this 3D-printed thyroid cancer phantom.
Participants:
patients (n = 33) and clinicians (n = 10).
Results:
In the patient survey, the patients communicated that the quality of understanding of their thyroid disease status was enhanced when clinicians explained using the phantom. The clinicians communicated that the 3D phantom was advantageous for explaining complex thyroid surgery procedures to patients, and that the 3D phantom was helpful in educating patients with relatively poor anatomical knowledge.
Conclusions:
Using 3D printing technology, we produced a CT-based 3D thyroid cancer phantom, and patient and clinician surveys on its utility indicated that it successfully helped educate patients, providing them with an improved understanding of the disease.
