Development of an anthropomorphic breast phantom for combined PET, B-mode ultrasound and elastographic imaging

Jun Dang (1) , Benjamin Frisch (2) , Philippe Lasaygues (3) , Dachun Zhang (4) , Stephan Tavernier (1) , Nicolas Felix (5) , Paul Lecoq (2) , Etiennette Auffray (2) , Joao Varela (6) , Serge Mensah (3) , Mingxi Wan (4)

1 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
2 CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research
3 LMA - Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique [Marseille]
4 Xjtu - Xi'an Jiaotong University
5 Supersonic Imagine
6 INESC-ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa

Combining the advantages of different imaging modalities leads to improved clinical results. For example, ultrasound provides good real-time structural information without any radiation and PET provides sensitive functional information. For the ongoing ClearPEM-Sonic project combining ultrasound and PET for breast imaging, we developed a dual-modality PET/Ultrasound (US) phantom. The phantom reproduces the acoustic and elastic properties of human breast tissue and allows labeling the different tissues in the phantom with different concentrations of FDG. The phantom was imaged with a whole-body PET/CT and with the Supersonic Imagine Aixplorer system. This system allows both B-mode US and shear wave elastographic imaging. US elastography is a new imaging method for displaying the tissue elasticity distribution. It was shown to be useful in breast imaging. We also tested the phantom with static elastography. A 6D magnetic positioning system allows fusing the images obtained with the two modalities. ClearPEM-Sonic is a project of the Crystal Clear Collaboration and the European Centre for Research on Medical Imaging (CERIMED).

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

Jun Dang, Benjamin Frisch, Philippe Lasaygues, Dachun Zhang, Stephan Tavernier, et al.. Development of an anthropomorphic breast phantom for combined PET, B-mode ultrasound and elastographic imaging. IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2011, 58 (3), pp.660-667. ⟨hal-00721342⟩