Abstract: Bake Your Phantom
摘要
Phantoms are an essential tool for conducting research experiments, quality control and teaching with radiation based imaging devices. While many phantoms are commercially available, their widespread use is limited by manufacturing complexity, high costs and lack of modification options. Also, 3D printing techniques exist for creating CT phantoms, but they require expensive equipment and the printing can be time-consuming. In [1], a study was performed to demonstrate a dough-based method to create customizable, realistic CT phantoms using affordable, readily available ingredients. For this study, various doughs composed of flour, salt, water, and oil were created, scanned, and evaluated with CT scans. The effects of storage conditions, preservation, and temperature were analyzed. As an example, a liver was segmented from a 3D CT scan, scaled to 1:2, a negative mold was printed and it was filled with the most suitable dough. The evaluation of the scanned ingredients and doughs show that Hounsfield unit (HU) values ranging from below −200HU to above 1200HU can be achieved. Based on the analysis, simple recipes are proposed to replicate radiodensities of different anatomical structures. The results from the liver phantom confirm the feasibility of mimicking liver tissue and morphology. CT phantoms imitating human tissues can be created using simple recipes, as demonstrated with our liver CT phantom. Refrigeration or freezing extends the usability, but temperature effects must be considered to ensure accurate HU values in CT scans. This approach holds substantial promise for expanding access to affordable, customizable CT phantoms and has various potential applications such as experimental research, test data generation for evaluating image processing algorithms and training.