NA-MIC Project Weeks

BabySteps: 3D Printing Using Slicer for creating clubfoot casts

Key Investigators

Hadi Fooladi, Children’s National
Pooneh Roshanitabrizi, Children’s National
Steve Pieper, Isomics, Inc.
Kevin Cleary, Children’s National
Anuradha Dayal, Children’s National

Project Description

About 1-2 in every 1000 babies are born with what’s called clubfoot, the most common skeletal deformity in children.

Clubfoot is well treated using a plaster casting method developed in the 1960s, but there is a potential to use 3D scanning and printing techniques to make the process more efficient and cost-effective. Also easier activities of daily living for families with plastic instead of plaster casts.

Objective

Ideal system would take a surface scan of baby’s foot, either with phone or custom camera
Computer would generate sequence of cast shapes customized to baby
3D printing models would be exported (STL) for generating custom casts

Approach and Plan

3D Scanning of the clubfoot cast
Loading the 3D model into Slicer
Selecting anatomical landmark points on the 3D model
Deforming the clubfoot 3D model through provided controls and widgets for printing next cast
3D printing the deformed clubfoot model
Repeating the process until printing the normal cast

Approach

Progress and Next Steps

3D Scan
- Challenge:
  - Baby’s foot is moving
- Ideas:
  - Using off the shelf 3D scanners
    - Currently we are using this approach but the result is not good
  - Molding the foot and CT scan the mold
  - Using motion capture cameras/techniques
  - Using a parametrized generic 3D model (No need to scan)
Measurement

Measurements

Deformation
- Using skeletal animation available in 3D modeling applications
- Using anatomically/physics based sumulation applications like OpenSim
- Using OsteotomyPlanner slicer extension