Polydimethylsiloxane tissue-mimicking phantoms for quantitative optical medical imaging standards

摘要

We report on a procedure to build and characterize solid tissue-mimicking phantoms of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymers. Controlled inclusion of light scattering titanium dioxide (TiO_2) nanoparticles enables the creation of phantoms having tunable light scattering properties with reduced scattering coefficients consistent across different measurement platforms including an integrating sphere and a time-resolved diffuse optical spectroscopic system. Backscatter confocal microscopy is also used to characterize the shape and distribution of included TiO_2 particles. The double integrating sphere and time-resolved diffuse spectroscopy were used to measure the reduced scattering coefficients of the phantoms. The results across different systems are in good agreement, suggesting that the PDMS/TiO_2 composite is a promising tissue-mimicking material for developing standards useful to validate measurements by different devices for multi-platform and multi-laboratory tests.