A Minireview on Brain Models Simulating Geometrical, Physical, and Biochemical Properties of the Human Brain

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidences that brain surrogates will be of great interest for researchers and physicians in the medical field. They are currently mainly used for education and training purposes or to verify the appropriate functionality of medical devices. Depending on the purpose, a variety of materials have been used with specific and accurate mechanical and biophysical properties, More recently they have been used to assess the biocompatibility of implantable devices, but they are still not validated to study the migration of leaching components from devices. This minireview shows the large diversity of approaches and uses of brain phantoms, which converge punctually. All these phantoms are complementary to numeric models, which benefit, reciprocally, of their respective advances. It also suggests avenues of research for the analysis of leaching components from implantable devices.

Computed Tomography-Assisted Study of the Liquid Contrast Agent’s Spread in a Hydrogel Phantom of the Brain Tissue

“…At the same time, the development of physical and mathematical models aimed at the quantitative interpretation of experimentally and clinically registered data on the perfusive flows require the existence of reference materials, which play the role of brain tissue phantoms but have more clearly defined controlled properties [16,17]. The typical media used for this purpose [18][19][20][21][22] include gels of different natures such as those formed by agarose, gelatin, synthetic elastomeric materials and different kinds of hydrogels.…”