Development of anthropomorphic phantoms for combined PET-ultrasound breast imaging

Jun Dang (1) , Philippe Lasaygues (2) , Dachun Zhang (3) , Stephan Tavernier (1) , Nicolas Felix (4) , Benjamin Frish (5) , Serge Mensah (2) , Mingxi Wan (3)

1 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
2 LMA - Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique [Marseille]
3 Xjtu - Xi'an Jiaotong University
4 Supersonic Imagine
5 CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research

As part of the development a combined PET-Ultrasound multimodal scanner for breast imaging by the Crystal Clear collaboration (The ClearPEM-Sonic project) we have developed and tested a phantom that can be used for making realistic images with both modalities. In a first step we measured the propagation velocities of the acoustic waves, the attenuation coefficient and the elasticity (Young's modulus) for several series of different samples based on gelatine and agar mixtures. We determined which preparations reproduce the acoustical and elastic properties of different body tissues of interest in breast imaging such as fat tissue, glandular tissue, fibrous tissue and carcinomat tissue. In a second step we have built phantoms where we added a small amount of FDG (WHAT IS FDG?) during the preparation of the phantom such as to give the different parts in the phantom activities similar to what is usually present in the breast during PET imaging. The phantom was than imaged on a Philips Gemini TF PET/CT and on a US scanner from ATL, HDI 5000. The images were superposed using rigid transformations to produce combined PET/US images. We also evaluated the performance of our phantoms for US elastographic imaging. Details on the procedure for producing the phantoms will be given.

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Jun Dang, Philippe Lasaygues, Dachun Zhang, Stephan Tavernier, Nicolas Felix, et al.. Development of anthropomorphic phantoms for combined PET-ultrasound breast imaging. IEEE International Medical Imaging Conference, 2009, United States. pp.1-9. ⟨hal-00440758⟩