A while back a friend of mine had to get an MRI scan of his brain. I had previously seen someone on Reddit get data from an MRI and convert it into a printable part. The post also included detailed instructions on how to do it, further cementing Reddit as my favorite site to browse. As a fun challenge, I thought I could take the MRI and make a small piece of home decor for my friend.
Just like the Redditor, I started by treating and segmenting the MRI data. In order view the scan, I imported the MRI data from a CD into a free DICOM (the native MRI file) viewer called 3D Slicer. The first step in treating the data was to create a binary map of the MRI signal using a threshold. This allowed me to separate the skull and the brain from the background. To isolate the image of the brain, I painstakingly went frame by frame “masking” out the areas that included sections of the brain and not the skull. Just for fun I also tried to segment out the cerebellum, but I am not a trained doctor nor have ever studied brain anatomy so the segmentation is probably wrong. Once I had gone through all the frames, I adjudged some smoothing parameters inside the 3D Slicer to obtain two 3D models that I could export as STLs(a common mesh file).
I then imported the STLs into Fusion 360 so I could tinker with them. I first used a plane to cut the two halves of the brain in half. This was quite easy as the brain provides a natural division. Fusion also now allows you to directly edit the mesh and close up the holes made from the cut. I then built a small stand where the printed parts can sit nicely. From there I reexported the STLs and used Cura to slice and process the G-code in order to take the time-lapses.
Just as a finishing note, before doing this project I did ask for my friend’s consent. He enthusiastically replied: “WTF YESSSSS! THAT SOUNDS SOOOO COOL! Can I get a copy?”
I leave you with a few pictures of the finished product. If you want to see more of the process, check out my video.