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3D Printed Heart Valve (Phantom) Selected for Innovation Award

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TechConnect recently announced the annual TechConnect Innovation Awards. Among the winners is a project headed up by Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) researchers Chuck Zhang, Kan Wang and Ben Wang. The TechConnect Innovation Awards selects the top early-stage innovations from around the world through an industry-review process of the top 15% of annually submitted technologies into the TechConnect World Conference. Rankings are based on the potential positive impact the submitted technology will have on a specific industry sector.

Zhang, who is a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and an affiliated faculty member with GTMI, K. Wang, a GTMI research engineer, and Ben Wang, the Executive Director of GTMI and a professor and Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems in ISyE, have been working a few years on perfecting ways to 3D print tissue-mimicking heart valves, also called phantoms, from an individual patient’s heart scan. The valves can emulate the disease and conditions that are present in the patient’s aorta. This can help doctors and surgeons explore treatment options and develop an optimum plan for surgery. The project also involves collaborators from Piedmont Heart Institute. The following offers technical information on the winning project:

3D Printed Meta-Material Tissue-Mimicking Phantoms

Patient-specific tissue-mimicking phantoms have a wide range of biomedical applications including validation of computational models and imaging techniques, medical device testing, surgery planning, medical education, doctor-patient interaction, etc. Although 3D printing technologies have demonstrated great potential in fabricating patient-specific phantoms, current 3D printed phantoms are usually only geometrically accurate. Mechanical properties of soft tissues can be mimicked at small strain situations, such as ultrasonic induced vibration. Under large deformation, however, the soft tissues and the 3D printed phantoms behave differently. The essential barrier is the inherent difference in the stress-strain curves of soft tissues and 3D printable polymers. Georgia Tech inventors have developed technology that demonstrates the feasibility of mimicking the mechanical strain stiffening behavior of soft tissues using dual-material 3D printed metamaterials with micro-structured reinforcement embedded in soft polymeric matrix. Although the two base materials are strain-softening polymers, both finite element analysis and uniaxial tension tests indicate that two of those dual-material designs are able to exhibit strain-stiffening effects as a metamaterial. Additionally, the design parameters have an effect on the mechanical behavior of the metamaterials. This system can fabricate patient specific tissue-mimicking phantoms with both geometrical and mechanical accuracies with dual-material 3D printed metamaterials.

Invention Information

“3D Printed Metamaterial Tissue-Mimicking Phantoms,” U.S. Patent Application No. 15/804,737, Inventors: Kan Wang, Zhen Qian, Chun (Chuck) Zhang, Changsheng Wu, Ben Wang and Mani Vannan.

Innovation Awards

For over 20 years the TechConnect has connected top applied research and early-stage innovations from universities, labs, and startups with industry end-users and prospectors. TechConnect has published over 10,000 technical papers, connected over 20,000 innovations with industry partners, provided prospecting to most all Fortune 500 technology companies, and supported most every U.S. Science and Technology agency including the National Nanotechnology Initiative since its inception. To learn more, visit: http://techconnectworld.com/World2018/participate/innovation/awards.html. Awards were presented at a conference in Anaheim California, May 13-16, 2018. 

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Laura Day
  • Created:05/17/2018
  • Modified By:Laura Day
  • Modified:05/17/2018

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