Embedded 3D printing of engineered lung cancer model for assisting fine-needle aspiration biopsy

Abstract Lung cancer is a serious global health issue that requires the development of patient-specific, lung cancer model for surgical planning to train interventionalists and improve the accuracy of biopsies. Although the emergence of three-dimensional (3D) printing provides a promising solution to create customized models with complicated architectures, current 3D printing methods cannot accurately duplicate anatomical-level lung constructs with tumor(s) which are applicable for hands-on training and procedure planning. To address this issue, an embedded printing strategy is proposed to create respiratory bronchioles, blood vessels, and tumors in a photocurable yield-stress matrix bath. After crosslinking, a patient-specific lung cancer analogous model is produced, which has tunable transparency and mechanical properties to mimic lung parenchyma. This engineered model not only enables the practical training of fine-needle aspiration biopsy but also provides the necessary information, such as coordinates of aspiration, wound depth, and interference with surrounding tissues, for procedure optimization.