Sometimes it's best to second guess something

Oct 20, 2014 07:36 GMT  ·  By

Seeing his wife diagnosed with a minor version of what could have been a much bigger problem should have come as a relief to the man behind All Things 3D, but it only made him more worried, to the point where he double-checked the results with his own means.

The result of his concern was that a new checkup was made, one that exposed the existence of a much bigger problem that had been overlooked.

The man's wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor last year, but it was supposed to be a minor version, which would have been straightforward enough to treat.

However, Michael Balzer (the husband we've been talking about) wasn't convinced that the Meningioma was as underdeveloped as the doctors thought.

The 3D model that saved a life

Balzer reviewed the DICOM information himself and built a 3D rendering for his wife, finally convincing her to get another CT scan with contrast.

This enabled the doctors to discover a 3.5-cm Meningioma in the upper left orbital roof. The new data allowed him to build 3D digital models which he loaded to SketchFab so that the neurosurgeons could review it.

They also looked for a surgeon who could remove it using a procedure that wasn't too invasive, eventually finding him after three months: John Hopkins at UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).

The surgery was finally performed in May. It took eight hours and removed 95% of the tumor. Further treatment and recovery only took three weeks, after which the woman was back at her work post. The tumor was located at the base of the skull, so the entry point was the upper eyelid if you can believe it.

Since then, Michael Balzer has been sending the neurosurgeon updates on his wife's recovery using a Structure Sensor 3D scanner and a 4eyes lens attachment normally used in Structures Sensor and iSense scanners.

What the alternative would have been

If the man hadn't managed to provide all the information and visual perspective he did, the wife should have gone through a surgery that would have had a third of her skull removed and her brain lifted out, causing long-term problems (loss of smell, taste and even the sight in the left eye) and possibly even death.

You can be sure that doctors and medical researchers will be using more 3D scanning and printing technologies to plan their operations from now on.

Anterior skull section with skull based tumor by slo 3D creators on Sketchfab