THE FIRST PERSON IN THE WORLD TO GET A 3D PRINTED FACE CREATED USING A SMARTPHONE
A cancer survivor whose face was ravaged by a tumour, leaving him with a large hole where his eye, nose and cheekbone had been, has become the first person to receive a 3D printed face prosthesis made with a smart phone.
Mr Conceiçao, 54, was diagnosed with upper maxillary carcinoma, an aggressive form of cancer in the upper palette of his mouth.
The cancer spread rapidly, destroying facial tissue on the right side of his face and half of the roof of his mouth, as well as damaging his throat.
Life-saving surgery halted the spread before it reached his brain, but when the tumour was removed, it claimed his right eye socket and part of his nose, sending him into depression.
Since the surgery eight years ago, Mr Conceiçao - a father-of-two who used to be a salesman in Sao Paulo - has used an uncomfortable prosthetic that kept falling off.
But in February, he was offered an innovative procedure which uses a smart phone for photogrammetry to build and print a 3D image of the missing part of his face.
The hand-finished silicon prosthesis, which is attached by magnets to three titanium screws under his eyebrow can easily be removed to be washed, has transformed his life by restoring his selfesteem.
Dr Rodrigo Salazar, a dentist and specialist in oral rehabilitation, from Paulista University (UNIP) in Sao Paulo, has been leading the project for two years.
He said: ‘Brazil doesn’t have the resources to equip all of its clinical centres with high-end technology.
‘So, we’ve developed an alternative and simplified low-cost procedure that captures patients’ facial anatomy and generates physical working models, giving us the equivalent results to prostheses produced on state-of-the-art equipment that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds.’ Dr Salazar used a free app called Autodesk 123D Catch, which turns photos into 3D models. He took 15 images of the trauma area in a planned sequence at three different heights. He said: ‘The rational for using a smartphone is that all modern mobile devices have an integrated accelerometer and a gyroscope sensor, which are automatically run by the application to guide the operator’s 3D position during the photo capture sequence.’
We’ve developed an alternative and simplified low-cost procedure that captures patients’ facial anatomy and generates physical working models, giving us the equivalent results to prostheses produced on state-of-theart equipment that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds
It is unclear how long the prosthetic will last before it needs to be replaced, but a silicone facial prosthesis typically lasts between one and three years depending on a number of factors, such as work and home environment, sun exposure, skin type and hygiene.