Abstract
Radiopacity is a critical property of materials that are used for a range of radiological applications, including the development of phantom devices that emulate the radiodensity of native tissues and the production of protective equipment for personnel handling radioactive materials. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a fabrication platform that is well suited to creating complex anatomical replicas or custom labware to accomplish these radiological purposes. We created and tested multiple ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filaments infused with varied concentrations of bismuth (1.2–2.7 g/cm3), a radiopaque metal that is compatible with plastic infusion, to address the poor gamma radiation attenuation of many mainstream 3D printing materials. X-ray computed tomography (CT) experiments of these filaments indicated that a density of 1.2 g/cm3 of bismuth-infused ABS emulates bone radiopacity during X-ray CT imaging on preclinical and clinical scanners. ABS-bismuth filaments along with ABS were 3D printed to create an embedded human nasocranial anatomical phantom that mimicked radiological properties of native bone and soft tissue. Increasing the bismuth content in the filaments to 2.7 g/cm3 created a stable material that could attenuate 50% of 99mTechnetium gamma emission when printed with a 2.0 mm wall thickness. A shielded test tube rack was printed to attenuate source radiation as a protective measure for lab personnel. We demonstrated the utility of novel filaments to serve multiple radiological purposes, including the creation of anthropomorphic phantoms and safety labware, by tuning the level of radiation attenuation through material customization.
Highlights
The field of medical imaging spans the preclinical and clinical research space with several imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound (US), and three-dimensionalSensors 2017, 17, 459; doi:10.3390/s17030459 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensorsX-ray computed tomography (CT) [1]
The radiodensities of 11 different 3.1. Three Dimensional (3D)-printed filaments were measured by taking CT scans of the filaments and quantifying the images using the Hounsfield Unit (HU) scale (Table 1)
The applications of 3D printing have been rapidly expanding as the underlying technology has matured, costs have decreased, and accessibility has increased
Summary
The field of medical imaging spans the preclinical and clinical research space with several imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound (US), and three-dimensionalSensors 2017, 17, 459; doi:10.3390/s17030459 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensorsX-ray computed tomography (CT) [1]. Physical models known as phantoms, which can directly mimic human tissues, are employed during the design, optimization, validation, and comparison processes for medical imaging systems. These phantoms can be used in place of actual human tissue to precisely test, calibrate, and classify parameters of the imaging systems, such as spatial resolution and imaging noise level [3]. In order to fabricate phantoms ideally suited for validation and training purposes, it is important to use materials that match physical parameters, such as radiopacity, of the tissue they will be representing. The first portion of the work presented here focuses on creating a phantom material that matches the radiopacity of bone and can be processed via additive manufacturing
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