The ultra-realistic lung -- wet, soft, and complete with tumours and blood vessels -- is one of a range of organs being produced by a Japanese firm that will allow surgeons to hone their skills without hurting anyone.
"With the wet model, doctors can experience the softness of organs and see them bleed," said Tomohiro Kinoshita of creator Fasotec, a company based in Chiba, southeast of Tokyo.
From guns to cars, prosthetics and works of art, 3D printing is predicted to transform our lives in the coming decades, researchers say, as dramatically as the Internet did before it.
The so-called Biotexture Wet Model, which will come onto the market for surgery training and medical equipment-testing in Japan in as early as April, is created by scanning a real organ in minute detail and creating molds on a 3D printer.
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That shell is then injected with gel-type synthetic resin to give it a wet, lifelike feeling in the surgeon's hands.
Maki Sugimoto, a medical doctor who has tried samples, said the wet models are almost "too realistic".
Seen without their context, he said, it would be easy to mistake them for the real thing.
"The touch is similar to that of the real liver," said Sugimoto, who is also a special instructor at Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine in Kobe, western Japan.
"I suppose that not only young, inexperienced doctors but also experienced doctors can perform a better operation if they can have a rehearsal first," he said.
"But this is obviously superior as it's produced precisely and is very close to the living organ in quality," he said.
For Morikawa, the world of 3D printing, which works by building up layers of material, offers endless possibilities for medicine, including maybe one day functional organs for use in transplants.