Radboudumc Technology Center 3D Lab

What we do

The 3D Lab consists of engineers who are widely spread across various medical departments of the hospital and work closely together with physicians and patients.

They work together both clinically and academically, in order to allow the hospital to offer broad, distinguishing and innovative patient care. An individual patient care program tailor-made to the needs of both the patient and the physician. The end result is more involvement from the patient, more realistic expectations, more predictable treatments with less morbidity, a better aesthetic result and shorter treatment periods.
 
The 3D Lab has a big impact on 4 main stages within patient care:

• Diagnostics

  For a complete and adequate diagnosis, several techniques for representation are combined to create a virtual patient. This enables us to take measurements that are impossible to perform on physical patients, in order to identify, objectify and quantify the problem.

• Planning

  For each patient we can make a tailor-made 3D planning. This planning maintains a balance between the wishes of the patient and the concerns of the physician. With the virtual analysis made during diagnostics, the patient can be operated on virtually, multiple times and in different ways. This allows us to determine the best possible postoperative result. The patient is better informed about the expected results and has realistic expectations.

• Treatment

  Thanks to the optimized planning, the surgeon can now operate faster and more predictably. For instance with navigation assisted surgery or with 3D-printed drill- and cutting templates. The surgeon knows what to expect, the surgery can happen more smoothly and the amount of complications and secondary corrections is lower.

• Evaluation

  The field of medicine is constantly evolving.  In order to keep improving, it is crucial to evaluate every patient that comes into contact with 3D technology. Where is there room for improvement, automatization or acceleration? Our focus is not only to improve the current technology and help the next patient even more, but also to use newer technologies in future treatments.