The purpose of this article is to review the fabrication process of physical patient simulators for surgical training and describes current research areas. Medical image acquisition and analysis are tools to reproduce human anatomy in 3D models. Data acquisition techniques include CT
scans, MRI, and ultrasound. Postprocessing of this data is necessary to obtain a file for 3D printing. Two available fabrication methods are direct 3D printing of an organ model and 3D printing a mould to cast an organ replica. Direct 3D printing presents several limitations. Therefore, casting
techniques with silicones and hydrogels are better suited for the fabrication of softer tissue models. Surgeons qualitatively evaluate the simulators and their ability to train students. It is also possible to make a quantitative evaluation to compare the properties of the simulators to the
physical properties of organs. Different methods exist to measure the physical properties of soft tissues, mainly to find the Young modulus of the soft tissue. The tests can be
Marine Shao, Carinna Parraman, David Huson, "Physical patient simulators for surgical training: a review" in Proc. IS&T London Imaging Meeting 2020: Future Colour Imaging, 2020, pp 124 - 128, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2694-118X.2020.LIM-05