Design and Implementation of an In-House Built Physical Phantom for Bone Density Measurements

Osteoporosis is a medical condition, in which bones become weak due to loss of bone density and mass. There are several approaches in diagnosing the osteoporosis. Amongst them, it is the quantitative Computed Tomography (CT), which implementation in the daily practice requires a proper calibration phantom. The aim of this work is to design, test and evaluate a custom calibration phantom to be used with quantitative CT. Initially, a computational phantom is designed, which is then printed with 3D printer. The physical phantom is evaluated on a clinical CT, showing Hounsfield Units in the range representative for cancellous bone. Further development is related to the investigation of other calcium based salts for imitating the different bone densities. Currently, the phantom is under clinical evaluation.