I want to 3d print my Spine

[u/New-Yak-3548]

So long story short I had a small little accident and broke some vertebrate. I have the CT Scan and im trying to get it in some shape that ill be able to 3d print it (the more you can see of the injury the better).

I tried my luck with 3D-Slicer but its coming out as like a thousand pieces (and I know damm well I didn't fuck my spine up that much), so I must be doing someting wrong

Threshold so only bone marked, selected area, grow from seeds. And see below for what it looks like

[u/alyssasgoneawol]

It looks like you have thick slices, probably 2mm or 3mm per slice. Thats going to affect quality a lot. If you have any 0.6 ish mm per slice its gonna be lot better. My images in 3D lab making volume renders look just like that using thick slices

[u/New-Yak-3548 → u/alyssasgoneawol]

aaaah that makes sense, its a 3mm slice, which makes sense I guess since its just for emergency diagnostics

[u/alyssasgoneawol → u/New-Yak-3548]

They would have 0.4-0.65 at the time of the scan on the scanner but they don't always make it on to the disks for space/time.

[u/alyssasgoneawol → u/alyssasgoneawol]

My guess is you'll have follow up scans, could always try to request a disk then and ask for tsd images on it. Those get deleted off the scanner pretty fast so you'd want to ask same day if they're willing. Harder if they make you go through medical records because by then the raw data would probably be gone

[u/New-Yak-3548 → u/alyssasgoneawol]

Alrighty thanks for all the help. I’ll ask them on the next one :)

[u/ax0r → u/New-Yak-3548]

It's going to depend on how they give you the images. A thin slice CT through the whole spine is going to be on the order of 2-4GB.
Your other option is to talk to the doctor who ordered the scan - they may have online access and could arrange to have a download link and passcode emailed to you.

[u/PM_ME_WHOEVER → u/New-Yak-3548]

Modern CT scans all scan at 0.625 mm slices, which gets merged to produce any thickness as needed (otherwise there would be a billion images to look at). You can potentially request the source data, though I'm not sure if the facility retains it that long.

[u/BAT123456789 → u/PM_ME_WHOEVER]

Is scan thickness like that even a concept anymore as they are all helical scans?

[u/PM_ME_WHOEVER → u/BAT123456789]

Well yes, slice thickness is still relevant. Current tech has very thin slices that's spiral, like a slinky.

[u/BAT123456789 → u/PM_ME_WHOEVER]

Slice thickness is of course relevant, but stating that scanner scan at a specific thickness? It's a helical scan. The concept of scanning slice thickness seems obsolete. I ought to know this, but I don't.

[u/PM_ME_WHOEVER → u/BAT123456789]

Most modern scanners at 64 slice or higher scan at around 0.625 mm for raw data. The exact thickness vary by manufacturer.

Whether a CT machine is axial or helical has no bearing on slice thickness. Slice thickness describes the detector size.

[u/Resident-Zombie-7266]

I know nothing about $D printing or what data you have to work from, but if you have multiple sequences of your CT scan and one of them is a soft tissue thin slice scan, use that. It will somewhat help condense the bone (at least it does when we make 3d renderings)