Design of 3D-printable nasopharyngeal swabs in Matlab for COVID-19 testing

Abstract

As an important diagnostic device for detecting respiratory infections, the nasopharyngeal swab is running out of supply due to the fast spread of COVID-19. In this short paper, we present a novel design platform in Matlab for realizing patient-specific nasopharyngeal swabs that can be quickly 3D-printed to fill the swabs’ shortage. Firstly, the swab is realized with our geometry modeling tool using the size derived from the patient’s CT data. Then, Selective-Laser-Sintering (SLS) is employed to print the swab using polyamide as biocompatible material. A printed swab is also presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed design platform.