A team of biomedical engineering students at King's College London has developed highly realistic artificial organs, called "anthropomorphic phantoms," to transform surgical training and medical device testing. Using patient scans and custom-engineered materials like polymers, rubbers, and hydrogels, Peach Simulators creates 3D organ models that mimic human tissue, allowing trainee surgeons to practice safely without relying on cadavers or animals. The models also support testing of AI-driven medical tools and new technologies, offering an ethical, cost-effective, and long-lasting alternative for medical education. #UK #organs #apt
00:38So Peach Simulators is a start-up that span out from King's College London and we're
00:44focusing on developing anthropomorphic phantoms, so fake organs that are highly realistic,
00:53anatomically correct and have a very low cost with the aim to reduce the use of animals
01:01and cadavers for surgical training and medical device testing.
01:04So we are a group of biomedical engineers, so we all have expertise in anatomy and artificial
01:23materials.
01:24So we develop 3D digital models of anatomical structures using patient scans and then we
01:31try to identify engineering materials that mimic and have similar properties to the human
01:37tissue to match and reproduce the human tissue using those materials.
01:42A lot of the operations that take place in cardiology with catheters have to do with x-ray because
01:49we can't, as I said, we can't really look on the inside.
01:52So this particular heart is made such that it looks just right under x-ray and that means
01:58it looks very similar to water.
02:00And then underneath it we have a spine and the spine is made such that we have a layer
02:06of compact bone which is very radiopaque and on the inside we have something that looks like
02:11spongy bone.
02:12And so once again it looks just right in terms of visibility and x-ray and the doctors can
02:18learn how things would look in real life and engage just with that tiny bit of visibility
02:24that we get where they are and what they are doing.
02:39It's an important skill because they can map the inside of the heart.
02:50the right ventricle as well so it's it's really important and the way we do.
02:56So we are developing our own materials and they replicate the properties of the body really
03:02really well without the need of any tissue.
03:05So they last a really long time you can keep them in your storage room and forget about them
03:09for a year or yeah we just come up with polymers, plastics, rubbers, hydrogels, all sorts of
03:16things.
03:17Especially in that little white box and in procedures operating on the vocal cords it's
03:21very important that we just get it right.
03:24So we use it and it can bend and wiggle into shape and we enter this inside of the nose and
03:37then here we can start seeing some of the structures of the throat and that is the esophagus and that
03:44is the trachea and those two are the vocal cords actually.
03:49So at the moment the medical training that the standard surgical training method is using the C1 do 1 teach 1 method where trainees usually start operating directly on patients just under the supervision of someone senior or using animals or
03:53cadavers or cadavers which is dead bodies which is dead bodies which is dead bodies and that involves
03:58a lot of ethical concerns and really high costs not just on the ethical concerns and really high cost.
04:03So we use the medical training that the standard surgical training method is using the C1 do 1 teach 1 method where trainees usually start operating directly on patients just under the supervision of someone senior or using animals or cadavers which is dead bodies and that involves a lot of ethical concerns and really high cost.
04:27Not just of purchase but also storage maintenance so a lot of challenges around it so we by providing these models that are very close to the human body we can actually reduce the need for those unethical but also highly like challenging alternatives.
04:48So now we're in the trachea.
04:55So now we're in the trachea.
04:57Unfortunately I'm not so proficient in injecting vocal cords and giving this mannequin speech but doctors can do it I promise.
05:03They can inject the vocal cords using a needle.
05:16Our technologies are used to test out new medical devices and new softwares a lot and so AI in particular it's really hard to test it out on animals because animals don't look like people and if you wanted to work on people you need to test it on something that just looks like a person.
05:21And so the only way to do this without human testing is really to make something fake that looks just like the real deal.
05:40We've had a lot of popularity in neurology recently.
06:06And we'd like to get involved with more fields of training and testing as well in cardiology and TE and so we'd like to start selling some of our models to the engineering associations, the medical associations that train new doctors and some of the med tech developers here in the UK and then from there we move to Europe and other parts of the world.
06:29We've only done a couple of times.
06:36We've only done a couple of times.
06:51Obviously, the church tuners were very few of us quite a bit.
06:55We're going to do it if there's a team infiltration.
06:58We're drilling away and there's a bunch of blood and we're worried that...
07:01We're going to do it if there's a team infiltration.
07:03We're drilling away and there's a bunch of blood and we're worried that...
07:07We're drilling away and there's a bunch of blood and there's a bunch of blood.
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