Three-dimensional printing of anatomically accurate, patient specific intracranial aneurysm models.

Objective: To develop and validate a method for creating realistic, patient specific replicas of cerebral aneurysms by means of fused deposition modeling.

Methods: The luminal boundaries of 10 cerebral aneurysms, together with adjacent proximal and distal sections of the parent artery, were segmented based on DSA images, and corresponding virtual three-dimensional (3D) surface reconstructions were created. From these, polylactic acid and MakerBot Flexible Filament replicas of each aneurysm were created by means of fused deposition modeling.