2023-12-22 07:00:30
If it was enough for Saint Louis to lay on hands to cure scrofula, medicine today prefers to use technology when it seeks to treat in a non-invasive way. A multidisciplinary team led by Xiao Kuang, researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Cambridge), specializing in materials science and biomedical engineering, has concocted the recipe for an ink capable of being solidified by polymerization in the using ultrasound. The reaction occurs thanks to the heat caused by ultrasound, the effect of which is concentrated by a focused transducer (emitter).
Demonstrated in the laboratory in aqueous solutions through biological tissues ex vivo, this form of 3D printing allows remote intervention. Published in the magazine Science from December 8, the study also shows that the volumetric printing produced by this technology is done more quickly and with a more regular rendering than with a classic 3D printer, which builds objects layer by layer. This proof of concept will need to be the subject of further experimentation before it can be applied in medicine.
In a perspective analysis also published by Science, Yuxing Yao, from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena), emphasizes that the technology presented here makes it possible to consider, in the long term, the replacement of certain surgical procedures with less invasive interventions. A perspective that he even judges “promising”… subject to first clearing up some uncertainties.
Injected via catheters
Indeed, the ultrasound-sensitive solution, a kind of gel, will have to pass non-toxicity tests before it can be injected via catheters into the human body. Because if the convergence of ultrasound at a point allows rapid and precise polymerization of the “sound-sensitive ink” thus targeted, most of this gel must be eliminated by the body and therefore be biocompatible. The ink developed by Harvard Medical School researchers is notably composed of a hydrogel based on ethylene glycol diacrylate, poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) as an acoustic absorber and ammonium persulfate as a thermal reagent.
For now, this technology, called “deep penetration acoustic volumetric printing” by Xiao Kuang, demonstrates its ability to work at depths of 2 to 3 centimeters through opaque media. To test this new type of 3D printing in the hypothesis of an intracorporeal intervention, the researchers used ex vivo porcine tissue composed of a layer of skin (3 millimeters), a layer of fat (5 millimeters ) and a layer of muscle (7 millimeters). A “screen” which did not prevent the machine from printing complex structures in the shape of honeycombs or artificial bones.
You have 10% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#ultrasound #printer #repair #tissue #body