When we think of 3D technologies, we often think of 3D printing, which, as discussed later, has seen rapid advances in recent years.
However, a sometimes overlooked area of medical innovation is 3D scanning.
Innovation in medical 2D scanning has been around for a long time, possibly the most famous example being Marie Curie’s mobile X-ray vehicle in World War 1.
Computed Tomography (CT) scanning and other 3D scanning techniques have also been around for a long time.
In recent years, however, thanks to the availability of higher computational power and significant advances in imaging technology, 3D scanning in general has seen innovation pace rapidly increase.
The hypothesis explored in this article is that, with medical 3D printing innovation moving forward at an ever-increasing rate, it is intuitive that medical 3D scanning innovation will follow.
This is due to the benefits available in creating medical devices or equipment suited to specific patient characteristics or needs, but this requires the ability to identify these characteristics or needs more precisely.
The rise of medical 3D printing
In September 2023, the European Patent Office (EPO) published a patent landscape report entitled “Innovation trends in additive manufacturing: Patents in 3D printing technologies.”
In this report, the authors identified the number of independent patent families which were published between 2001 and 2020 in the field of additive manufacturing and found that the majority were in the health and medical fields.
There were 9,665 international patent families published over nearly two decades, and the number began to rapidly increase in 2013, a trend confirmed by the first graph presented below.
The appeal of 3D printing for medical technology is clear to see.
It offers the ability to generate bespoke and patient-specific designs, it allows the production of parts which have very complex geometries, it enables parts to be designed with mechanical or chemical characteristics which better integrate with living tissue, and it generally uses less material than parts made using subtractive manufacturing.
