Development of a personalized and realistic educational thyroid cancer phantom based on CT images: An evaluation of accuracy between three different 3D printers

摘要

Background: Communication with patients on their thyroidectomy is complex and difficult, especially for inexperienced clinicians, because of the organ's anatomical complexity and proximity to arteries, veins, nerves and vital organs. The aim of this work was to develop a CT image-based 3D-printed model of thyroid cancer using various kinds of 3D printers and to compare their accuracies and other aspects regarding facilitating this patient-physician communication by improving both parties' understanding.