Liver here, get your liver here! Japanese scientists have found a way to produce lifelike models of human organs using a 3D printer.
The Biotexture Wet Model was developed by Fasotec, a company based outside of Tokyo. Their prerogative for the creation of the mock organ (morgan?) was to engineer strictly for teaching purposes within the medical and surgical fields — in other words, to make sure that students don't catastrophically blow it while cutting up real live humans.
The organs themselves are each made up of a shell to dictate shape, which is then filled with a gelatinous synthetic resin; the resin gives it that super-sexy "wet" look that makes it all the more lifelike. The organs can also be customized with tumors and blood vessels (hot).
As to whether wet models could one day be used to substitute actual organs, Dr. Toshiaki Morikawa, manager of the Medical Care Division at Jikei University Hospital, posited that the possibilities were certainly in place.
"Considering future progress in life sciences, I think it is an urgent and significant theme that this outstanding technology should be modified for application to biology," he remarked.
Wet models have been available for preorder in Japan since October 2014, at ¥15,000 ($127) a pop, but their increasing popularity has Fasotec planning to make them available abroad in the near future.
Here's a video demonstrating the technology below. Fair warning, it's not for the faint at heart.
