DIGITAL ARTWORK

CREST utilizes industry standard 2D and 3D graphics and animation technologies to develop a pipeline of digital artwork that leads towards practical capabilities.

It all starts with anatomy. Each project begins by accessing our MRI and CT datasets and converting them to anatomically accurate 3D models.

Models are designed to work at various levels of complexity, ranging from low-resolution, boundary meshes used in finite-element-modeling, to the highly detailed, perfect for cinematic artwork and additive manufacturing.

DESIGN ENGINEERING & PROTOTYPE FABRICATION

CREST's in-house engineering team has the ability to use patient specific reference data to design and fabricate electro-mechanical medical simulator prototypes through the use of traditional and additive manufacturing technologies.

PRACTICAL ARTISTRY

CREST staff share background's in film and television make-up, special effects, and sculpture. Traditional molding and casting, as well as novel 3D-printing, are utilized to recreate patient anatomy. We focus on physical realism of tissue and the unique characteristics required for such diverse procedures as palpation, laparoscopy, endososcopy, open surgeries, suturing, intubation, and hemorrhage control.  A close relationship to the Tissue Properties Lab allows us to test our synthetic materials against human tissue to verify our goals are met.  Material selection and formula creation aid the physical qualities of our models while painting and presentation support the aesthetics of the product.

HUMAN TISSUES PROPERTIES TESTING

Since 2014, across two institutions, the CREST Human Tissue Lab has been characterizing human tissues and organs to compile a material property database under the Department of Defense Army Research Lab (DoD ARL) Grant #W911NF-16-2-0147. Mechanical and optical properties of tissues and organs are characterized using classical and lab-developed procedure-based instruments to quantify the clinically relevant behavior of human tissues. Classical mechanical characterization of tissues includes the use of a TA Electroforce TestBench uniaxial tension instrument and TA Electroforce 5500 compression apparatus. Lab-developed procedure-based instruments enable the quantification of “tool-tissue interactions” – namely puncture, palpation, coefficient of friction, tube insertion, scalpel incision, and suture pull-out. The CREST Human Tissue Lab works synergistically with the Synthetic Tissue lab and Engineering team to develop the most life-like simulators available.

EDUCATION AND VALIDITY

All work done at CREST has education and training as its objective. All of our projects begin by establishing the Learning Objectives. From that we generate a detailed educational requirements document based on our well established methodology, capturing all aspects of the topic or skill we want the learners to master. We then build the assessment instruments that will allow us to provide feedback and know when the learning objectives have been reached.