Matching Polyjet 3D Printed Material Properties to Human Left Heart Tissue Mechanical Behavior

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science
• Cardiovascular Research

Background:

• 3D printing offers patient-specific anatomical models for cardiovascular procedure planning.
• Current 3D printed models lack detailed mechanical property characterization compared to actual human tissues.
• Tissue-mimicking materials for 3D printing require thorough comparison with native tissue biomechanics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the mechanical properties of 3D printed materials from the Stratasys J750 Digital Anatomy Printer (DAP) with human left heart tissue.
• To create a database of 3D printer materials and identify optimal fits for specific cardiac regions.
• To evaluate the suitability of polyjet materials for replicating cardiovascular tissue biomechanics.

Main Methods:

• Mechanical testing of 73 polyjet materials from the Stratasys J750 DAP.
• Utilized nonlinear elastic constitutive models for material property analysis.
• Compared experimental data against published human cardiovascular tissue properties.

Main Results:

• All tested J750 DAP materials demonstrated stiffer mechanical behavior compared to native cardiac tissue across all regions.
• A database was successfully created, mapping printer materials to cardiac regions.
• SoftDM400, SolidInternalOrgans_FiberContraction6, and Liver_HighlyContractile were identified as the top three best-fitting materials for specific cardiac regions.

Conclusions:

• Current 3D printing materials, including those from the J750 DAP, do not fully replicate the mechanical properties of human heart tissue.
• Further development of tissue-mimicking materials is necessary for accurate cardiovascular modeling.
• The established database provides valuable insights for selecting the closest-matching materials for cardiovascular 3D printing applications.