[00:00.00]Researchers are now using three-dimensional, or 3D printing to create models of the human heart to help heart specialists. 
[00:11.42]The heart doctors can use the models to better help patients before an operation.
[00:18.60]Surgeons regularly use digital images to explore the heart in close detail. 
[00:25.24]But no two human hearts are alike. 
[00:29.22]This led Matthew Bramlet to create exact heart models from those images. 
[00:36.08]Dr. Bramlet is a pediatric or children's heart expert at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. 
[00:45.46]He says the 3-D models show information he cannot get any other way.
[00:52.38]"Even when I will take the MRI and render the images, even a print heart that is sort of spinning on the screen, it's still a 2-D screen. 
[01:03.86]And so what we've done with the printed models, we've pulled it out of the screen so that
[01:08.52] you can actually hold it in your hand and evaluate the anatomy for the first time in a manner that makes sense and is logical."
[01:18.99]A 3-D printer uses images from a digital display to create a physical model of a human heart. 
[01:28.14]Matthew Bramlet says doctors can use the model, in his words, "to understand the anatomy for the first time."
[01:37.16]Pictures from medical tests like CAT scan or MRI are sent to a 3-D printer to create a heart in a plaster or clay form. 
[01:49.02]The printer then constructs the heart, thin layer by thin layer.
[01:54.83] Dr. Bramlet says the model matches the real heart in every detail. 
[02:01.04]"When we're done with the model and made our decision, we want to be able to go back to the source image and confirm those findings," he says.
[02:11.33]Dr. Bramlet has built model hearts for different kinds of heart operations. All of the operations were successful. 
[02:21.39]In his first case, digital images showed only one tiny hole in a baby's heart. 
[02:29.15]But, the 3-D printed model showed several defects or problems that the baby was born with. 
[02:36.89]Dr. Bramlet says those defects could not be seen easily in the images. 
[02:43.24]The heart surgeon was able to change the type of surgery for the patient based on the 3-D model. 
[02:51.25]He added that 3-D heart models saves time during heart operations.
[02:57.59]"In the future, relying on that information would allow us to not even have to stop the heart to sort of go down the alternative pathway."
[03:07.80]Kathy Magliato is a cardiac surgeon at Saint John's Health Center in Los Angeles. 
[03:15.28]She welcomes the new technology.
[03:18.60] She says it could help her make better decisions before she operates on the hearts of her patients.
[03:26.84]"The fact that I can then take this very complicated structure, which has endless possibilities of what it could look like anatomically when I open the body, 
[03:37.25]and you give it to me before the operation and I can hold it in my hand and plan an operation around what I'm seeing, touching and feeling. 
[03:46.03]That to me is what can potentially change the game in an operation and save lives."
[03:52.96]Matthew Bramlet continues to research the technology. 
[03:57.49]He is working with the National Institutes of Health to build a 3-D library that includes heart models and images that others can use.
[04:09.27]I'm Jonathan Evans.