3D-printed medical camera may fit inside syringe

3D printing has a manufacturing process with nearly endless possibilities. From printing prosthetic limbs, toys and even chocolate, 3D printing is constantly finding new applications. Additive manufacturing may now be capable of producing a tiny camera capable of fitting inside a syringe, reports Gizmag.

Scientists from University of Stuttgart have developed a three-lends camera that is able to provide sub-micrometer accuracy with the possibility to offer better medical imaging. Fitting within a standard syringe, the camera can be delivered directly to organs.

The camera has a diameter and height of 125 micrometers, the width of two human hairs, and is attached to a 5.6-ft (1.7-m) optical fiber. Positioned at the end of the endoscope, the camera can focus on the most minuet particles as small as 3 mm (0.12 in).

"The time from the idea, the optics design, a CAD model, to the finished, 3D-printed micro-objectives is going to be less than a day," says Professor Harald Giessen, from the University of Stuttgart's 4th Physics Institute. "We are going to open potentials just like computer-aided design and computer-integrated manufacturing did in mechanical engineering a few years ago."