>How far back does this technology exist?
Who were the pioneers?
>What related patents have been issued?
Some of this info is from my memory so it may miss a few details.
First US based universites doing CT, MRI research...... UCLA, Clemson,
University of Kentucky all about 1989-91. First model was by UCLA but the
direct link was not to CT or MRI although that was the data souce. Data
was probably reconstructed by hand in a solid modeling cad package. In
1990-91 CU and UK wrote software to convert to either SLI (Clemson) or STL
(UK). About the same time Univerity of Leuvan (Belgium) also wrote software
and Materialese (bridgeworks) was born. Early CT data was used by Rich
Binning to do the ear of the young man in Chicago.
The patent that seem to impede the progress of this application was the
White patent and it was held by Cemax Medical Products and now by Biomet,
Inc. I don't believe it has been challenged nor have they challenged any
of the current commerical products. Anyone know different?
University of Kentucky applied for patents....I do not know if any have
been issued.
Work done inside Medical companies will never be known unless they
commericalize a product.
MEK in Kiel Germany uses a milling technology to do models form CT data.
We considered this technology here at Clemson about the same time we were
looking at SLA technology.
Few really good papers were published during the early 90s mainly due to
research and the patent question. For this technology to become important
in the US, the speed and cost of models will have to come down as well as a
cultural change in the medical community.
Anyone care to add to the history?
Elaine
*******************************************************************
Opinions, suggestions, and other controversial matter VOID where prohibited.
******************************************************************
Elaine Persall, Director
Clemson University Laboratory to Advance Industrial Prototyping
206 Fluor Daniel Bldg. Clemson, SC 29643-0925
864-656-0321 (voice) 864-656-4435 (fax)
persall@ces.clemson.edu
http://design.eng.clemson.edu/rp/persall/elaine.html
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