When I first started to follow the 3D printing industry, one of the first apparent advantages that I was shown (by the people at Cavendish Imaging) was medical modelling for pre-surgical preparation. By 3D printing the area that the doctor is going to operate on, the surgeons can practice the intervention so that when they perform the operation they already know how to act.
What I did not fully comprehend was the extent to which surgical modelling can go and the possible application in device R&D and marketing. At least until I browsed Materialise’s 
Whether a surgical device makes it into the market or not may seem irrelevant to a patient, but being able to show that a device can truly simplify an operation may in fact make the difference between surgical success and failure.
