Perioperative Echocardiography Training: A Role for Ultra-high Resolution Three-dimensional Printed Human Heart Models

Echocardiography is essential for diagnosing and assessing the severity of perioperative structural and/or functional heart disease. Yet, educational opportunities to better understand echocardiography-based cardiac anatomy remain limited by the two-dimensional display, lack of anatomic details, variability of heart models, and/or costs and global availability of training. 3D printing using data from patient CT or MRI datasets has been used for creating effective teaching materials, although often it is limited by the resolutions. In this report, we discuss the development of ultra-high resolution 3D printed human hearts using ex vivo microcomputed tomography (μCT) and describe its utility for teaching both basic and advanced recommended views by the American Society of Echocardiography.