Thanks to work undertaken by Dr Heron Werner — an obstetrician working at the DASA clinic in Rio de Janeiro — patients can now go beyond sharing the typical 2-D pictures resulting from ultrasound examinations.

When Ana Silveira and her husband, who are both blind, visited Dr Werner for her first pre-natal check-up, he was able to give them a 3-D printed model of their growing foetus to hold, feel and keep.

Ana said: “Holding the small foetus at 12 weeks was an indescribable feeling. Following up on our son’s evolution allowed us to have this feeling of being whole, because we ‘see’ with our hands. When we touched the second model, we could ‘see’ that our son had our characteristics.

“Thanks to Dr Werner’s printing of the ultrasound scan, we were able to not only know that our baby was growing healthily but also have a very real contact with him.”

The ultrasound machine that made this 3-D printing possible is the Voluson E10 from GE Healthcare (www3.gehealthcare.com).