How's
this for a great use for emerging technology? Combine a sonogram that
gives a 3D rendering of a fetus with 3D printing, and you produce a
plastic model of the baby months before birth. This goes a long way
toward allowing the vision-impaired to feel the shape and size of the
baby, whether it's the mother or other family members. Industrial
designer Jorge Roberto Lopes dos Santos is putting that technology to
work.
His company Tecnologia Humana 3D has been
developing new ways to build three-dimensional computer models using
data from sonograms and other imaging techniques after initially setting
out to enhance prenatal diagnostic tools.
The work took a new
direction when dos Santos realized that printing these models would give
visually impaired mothers-to-be a chance to meet their babies in utero.
“We
work mainly to help physicians when there is some eventual possibility
of malformation,” dos Santos said. “We also work for parents who want to
have the models of their fetuses in 3D.”
Tecnologia Humana designs
the models with sophisticated programs that produce highly detailed
simulations of a fetus’ anatomy that doctors can examine virtually.
So
of course the technology will also be available to those who don't need
it but can afford it. Soon, when you ask an expectant father how his
wife is doing, and he may pull out a tiny plastic fetus instead of the
currently used sonogram printout.
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