Abstract
Intralipid is a material widely employed for the preparation of phantoms for optical imaging and biophotonics applications in medical field. The development of new optical diagnostic equipment in these fields requires the use of well-designed phantoms with optical properties (including scattering and absorption) mimicking those of biological tissues in all the pre-clinical stages of investigations. For this reason, great research effort has been devoted to optically characterize Intralipid and at preparing optimal phantoms. In this short review, we summarize the principal physico-chemical characteristics of Intralipid and the main contributions in the assessment of its scattering and absorption properties. In addition, the most largely used Intralipid-based homogeneous and non-homogeneous phantoms are discussed. Even though other materials are available for the preparation of phantoms, the use of Intralipid still offers an inexpensive and easy-to-use method for preparing phantoms with finely tuned optical properties.
Highlights
In the last years, the popularity of optical techniques as powerful methods for studies in the biomedical field have been continuously increasing [1 - 9]
The development and assessment of new optical diagnostic equipment require the use of well-designed tissue phantoms in all the pre-clinical stages of investigations [16]
Due to the ready availability, low cost, long-term stability and batch-to-batch reproducibility of Intralipid, it can be considered a fundamental compound for preparing phantoms for the calibration and performance assessment of optical spectroscopy instrumentation for optical imaging, even if some attention has to be paid to the fact that Intralipid cannot be rigorously considered an optical standard [31, 38]
Summary
The popularity of optical techniques as powerful methods for studies in the biomedical field have been continuously increasing [1 - 9]. Other materials have been adopted for preparing phantoms for reference and calibration tests of optical diagnostic tools and instruments [20, 21], but Intralipid is still an interesting choice because it is easy to handle and has a low price. For these reasons, we believe that it can be interesting to revise the main examples of Intralipid phantoms reported in the literature and the procedures to realize them with the aim of stimulating new biotechnological research in the field. The results of a survey about recent patents regarding Intralipid phantoms will be discussed, witnessing, on one hand, the economic importance of these phantoms as testing elements for new medical equipment and, on the other hand, the number of patents devoted at presenting new methods for realizing Intralipid based phantoms
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