A New Iodinated Liver Phantom for the Quantitative Evaluation of Advanced CT Acquisition and Reconstruction Techniques

摘要

An iodinated liver phantom is needed for liver CT related studies, such as the quantification of lesion contrast. Prior studies simulated iodinated hepatic lesions with tubes of iodine solution, which involved complications associated with the setup, differences from actual lesion morphology, and susceptibility to iodine sediments. To develop a dedicated liver phantom with anthropomorphic structures and solid lesions, we designed a phantom with iodinated liver inserts and lesions of different sizes and contrasts. The concentration of iodine in liver parenchyma was determined according to the HU measured from clinical images. The concentrations in high and low contrast lesions were selected so as to provide challenging but reasonable detection tasks. The application of the liver phantom was initially validated at different doses and reconstruction settings.