Soft Liver Phantom with a Hollow Biliary System

Abstract

Hepatobiliary interventions are regarded as difficult minimally-invasive procedures that require experience and skills of physicians. To facilitate the surgical training, we develop a soft, high-fidelity and durable liver phantom with detailed morphology. The phantom is anatomically accurate and feasible for the multi-modality medical imaging, including computer tomography (CT), ultrasound, and endoscopy. The CT results show that the phantom resembles the detailed anatomy of real livers including the biliary ducts, with a spatial root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.7 ± 0.7 mm and 0.9 ± 0.2 mm for the biliary duct and the liver outer shape, respectively. The sonographic signals and the endoscopic appearance highly mimic those of the real organ. An electric sensing system was developed for the real-time quantitative tracking of the transhepatic puncturing needle. The fabrication method herein is accurate and reproducible, and the needle tracking system offers a robust and general approach to evaluate the centesis outcome.

Soft robotics for physical simulators, artificial organs and implantable assistive devices

“…During transhepatic surgery, needle localization is the most critical parameter to be monitored under real-time Ultrasound (US) imaging guidance since it directly relates to the surgical outcome and patient safety. To give quantitative information with high temporal and spatial resolution during the needle insertion process, researchers presented a soft silicone liver phantom, characterized by an accurate biliary system and advanced sensorization [21]. The described phantom resembled a real liver also under endoscopy and computer tomography imaging.…”

Patient-Specific 3D Printed Soft Models for Liver Surgical Planning and Hands-On Training

“…The simulation-based training involves the use of essential equipment and computer software to model a real scenario. Until now, most approaches in preoperative surgical planning focused on [ 4 , 5 ] live animal and ex vivo models, as well as virtual reality (VR) models. However, these procedures showed different disadvantages.…”

“…In recent years, several studies have manufactured different realistic 3D models: kidney [ 4 ], brain [ 16 ], cardiac [ 17 , 18 ], neuroblastoma [ 19 ], liver [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ], etc. However, most of the liver cases found in the literature had limitations, such as the accuracy of the 3D model and lack of quantitative quality validation in the production process.…”

“…(2) Witowski et al [ 24 ] reported a more cost-effective approach but presented challenges in the anatomical accuracy of the final model. (3) Tan et al [ 4 ] developed a liver case taken from an online database for surgical simulation training and, therefore, the case was probably not used for preoperative surgical planning. Finally, (4) in most of the published cases, there is no quantitative validation of the models [ 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”

Silicone‐based materials with tailored MR relaxation characteristics for use in reduced coil visibility and in tissue‐mimicking phantom design

“…32 Silicone-based phantoms are becoming more popular due to their structural stability, longer shelf life, and ease of handling. T 1 and T 2 relaxation times, US scattering parameters, and Hounsfield units (HU) of tissue-mimicking phantoms can be accurately manipulated by adding a proper concentration of other ingredients to the base recipe, such as water, 2 sugar, 28 cellulose, 33 glycerol,glass beads,sodium chloride, 34 and Gd-based MRI contrast agents. 30 In et al 2 suggested a mix of an ultraviolet (UV)-curable silicone with various concentrations of water and hydrophilic silicone (HS) for MRI/CT/US liver phantom fabrication.…”