Ancient meets modern
Skulls have many uses as teaching aids - from the chimp skull on the left, used in by zoologists, to the high-tech reproduction of a human skull on the right, a section used to help surgeons prepare for reconstructive surgery. UCL medical physics researchers were early adopter of 3D printing to make models from medical scans. Using CT and MRI data, they build a 3D model of the bones as they ought to look (if they hadn't been damaged in accidents or through cancer) cloning missing areas and using symmetry to inform what an intact skull would look like. After this 3D photoshopping, they print off the model and give it to plastic surgeons. It helps them to envisage the shapes they need to construct during surgery, which, if they are made of living bone transplanted from elsewhere, only have one or two hours to be removed, reshaped, and reinserted.