CHUCK ZHANG

CHUCK ZHANG

CHUCK ZHANG

Professor, Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Tech

Applications of Custom 3D Printed Physiological Heart Valve Models for Reducing Heart Surgery Risks
3D printing is finding more and more applications in medical fields, particularly personalized healthcare, due to its capabilities of producing patient-specific products, devices, and prototypes/models. This tutorial presents an innovative method of producing patient-specific, tissue-mimicking heart valves with sensing capability by integrating metamaterial design, multi-material 3D printing and printed electronics techniques. The physiological models can help surgeons or cardiologists make informed diagnosis, optimize surgery planning, and practice the operation prior to the surgery. In addition, the tissue-mimicking heart valves can provide effective means for surgeon training and patient education. This method is demonstrated through an application case of predicting post-surgery paravalvular leak of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure for treating aortic stenosis conditions. The 3D printed heart valve models were found to be effective in mimicking the valves of real patients for surgery outcome prediction. This tutorial will also present the ongoing research of this project: to explore the application of the virtual physiological models to augment the limited real patients data for developing machine learning-based predictive models to improve medical devices design, and diagnosis and treatment of certain medical conditions.