Design of 3D-Printed Nasopharyngeal Swabs for Children is Enabled by Radiologic Imaging

American Journal of Neuroradiology

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FIG 1.
A, Sagittal section of a maxillofacial CT scan of a 22-month-old patient. Shown in red is the trajectory of a virtually inserted swab reaching the posterior nasopharynx. The white box shows the portion of the anatomy chosen to print the nasopharyngeal passage. B, A commercial flocked pediatric swab (COPAN Flock Technologies swab) reaching the posterior nasopharynx within the 3D-printed nasopharyngeal passage. C, Design of the elliptical-section 3D-printed pediatric swab (Design ES).
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FIG 2.
Results comparison based on 3 repetitions and 5 anatomic models. A, Average performance score (a lower value of the performance is better). B, Average time of the procedure in seconds. The Flocked 2 swab was not able to complete the testing procedure due to very narrow nasal passages of model 1. The asterisk indicates the significant difference calculated by multiple ANOVA statistical tests. Error bars represents SDs. C, Graph showing the relation of time and performance tests results for each of the tested swabs. Locations closer to the graph origin indicate faster and smoother test performance.

Tabularized dimensions for 2 commercial and 3 in-house printed swab designs^{^a}