Suitability of 3D printing materials for printing anthropomorphic phantoms: A simulation study

Abstract

The use of anthropomorphic phantoms finds an increased application in the last years. From their use in virtual studies to assessment of new imaging technologies and reconstruction algorithms. The current study proposes a resource saving approach, in terms of time and money for assessing the creation of an anthropomorphic model by means of 3D printing. A four component object consisting of segmentations of adipose, gland, skin and lesion tissues was created from an MRI image set. From the resulting object two computational breast models were created – one with the elemental composition of the real breast tissues and a second one with the elemental composition of the low cost 3D printing materials planned to be used for the phantom manufacturing. Then, an in-house developed software was used to generate mammography images, which were subjected to both visual assessment and profile comparison. In this study we used nylon and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene 3D printing materials to represent the x-ray properties of the different breast tissues. The results showed that these 3D materials well represent the x-ray absorption characteristics of both glandular, adipose and skin tissues, while further investigation on suitable materials for representing the lesion characteristics is needed.