How 3D technology is revolutionizing face transplants
From modeling to printing, it's all about seeing inside someone's head
By Jillian Mock 3 hours ago
Face transplants are an ideal setting to fuse medicine with the growing world of 3D printing and imaging. The left image is a rendering of what face transplant recipient Cameron Underwood's face looked like before his surgery; the right is a planned rendering based on the donor's face.
NYU Langone Medical Center
Cameron Underwood received a new face on January 6, 2018. By the time his surgery ended, everything below Underwood’s eye sockets had been replaced with the face of organ donor William Fisher.
A face transplant is exactly what it sounds like—replacing the disfigured face of one person with the whole, undamaged face of a very recently deceased person. Eduardo Rodriguez, plastic surgeon and face transplant specialist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center who performed surgery on Underwood, insists this surgery is a way to give these patients “a second chance at life.†Without a new face, patients like Underwood have great difficulty speaking, swallowing, eating, expressing themselves, as well as all the other things we do with our faces that we never think twice about.
https://www.popsci.com/3d-technology-face-transplant
