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Material Analysis for a New Kind of Hybrid Phantoms Utilized in Multimodal Imaging

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Book cover World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering 2018

Part of the book series: IFMBE Proceedings ((IFMBE,volume 68/1))

Abstract

The use of phantoms for medical imaging is of increasing importance, especially concerning hybrid imaging technologies. The purpose of this study was to find new materials suitable for hybrid phantoms which can be used in magnet resonance imaging, CT and nuclear medicine. Suitable phantom materials have to meet the requirements: tissue-equivalent relaxation and absorption/scattering coefficients, material stability/strength to reproduce tissue structures, no bacterial infestation of the material, cost-effective use. The material samples in this study were based on the basic components: carrageenan (3%, m/m), agarose (0.8–1.0%, m/m), GdCl3 (30–100 µmol/kg), NaNO3 (antiseptic agent, <0.1%, m/m) and H2O. Additional modifiers were added: Ba(NO3)2, SiO2, CuSO4, MgCl2. These modifiers influence the relaxation times and abortion characteristics. For tissue-equivalency, T1/T2-times and Hounsfield Units (HU) of material samples were compared to various human tissues after performing the following experiments: MR-relaxometry was measured using a 1.5T MRI scanner. HU were acquired at 80 kV/110 kV/130 kV using a CT scanner; for nuclear medicine, material samples (10 MBq, TC-99 m) were examined in a water-phantom utilizing a SPECT-system. Tissue structures, like soft-tissue, brain (gray/white matter), kidney and liver can be simulated with high accuracy in their relaxation times and HU-values using (Ba(NO3)2 as an additional modifier. This modifier meets all requirements and covers T1/T2-times of 700–1400 ms/50–80 ms and HU-values of 12–740 HU. Functional relationships were investigated by describing the T1/T2-times in dependency of the T1/T2-modifiers. Other modifiers did not meet all tissue-equivalent characteristics. Our gel-based approach can also be used in nuclear medicine to generate active tissue structures, e.g. hot nodules with TC-99 m.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank the institute for radiology and nuclear medicine at the Paracelsus Private Medical University for providing their MR scanner for relaxometry measurements.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. X-Ray and Molecular Imaging Lab, Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden, Hetzenrichter Weg 15, 92637, Weiden, Germany

    Manuel Stich, Karina Schuller, Anne Slawig & Ralf Ringler

  2. Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Würzburg, Oberdürrbacher Str. 6, 97080, Würzburg, Germany

    Manuel Stich & Anne Slawig

  3. Institute for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Paracelsus Private Medical University, Prof.-Ernst-Nathan-Str. 1, 90419, Nuremberg, Germany

    Klaus Detmar & Michael Lell

  4. Molecular Diagnostics Lab, Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden, Hetzenrichter Weg 15, 92637, Weiden, Germany

    Sebastian Buhl

Authors
  1. Manuel Stich
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  2. Karina Schuller
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  7. Ralf Ringler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Stich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CIIRC, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Lenka Lhotska

  2. Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Prague, Czech Republic

    Lucie Sukupova

  3. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Igor Lacković

  4. Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    Geoffrey S. Ibbott

Ethics declarations

No humans or animals are involved in this study. The study was performed in compliance with ethical standards.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Electronic Supplementary Material

Suppl. 1: Figure of the material sample for MRI and CT measurements and spherical material sample for measurements in nuclear medicine.

University-Server URL:

https://www.oth-aw.de/files/oth-aw/Personen/Stich/Suppl1_compressed.tif

Suppl. 2: Figure of the measured and fitted SIR and SSE signals for the basic component mixture with different modifiers.

University-Server URL:

https://www.oth-aw.de/files/oth-aw/Personen/Stich/Suppl2_compressed.tiff

Suppl. 3: Surface and contour plots of the regression polynomials PT1(G, B) for the T1 relaxation and PT2(G, B) for the T2 relaxation.


University-Server URL:

https://www.oth-aw.de/files/oth-aw/Personen/Stich/Suppl3_compressed.tiff

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Stich, M. et al. (2019). Material Analysis for a New Kind of Hybrid Phantoms Utilized in Multimodal Imaging. In: Lhotska, L., Sukupova, L., Lacković, I., Ibbott, G.S. (eds) World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering 2018. IFMBE Proceedings, vol 68/1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-9035-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-9035-6_4

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  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-9034-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-9035-6

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