Design and fabrication of a realistic anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom for MR purposes

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to design an anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom that can be used for MRI and other electromagnetic applications. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An eight compartment, physical anthropomorphic head phantom was developed from a 3T MRI dataset of a healthy male. The designed phantom was successfully built and preliminarily evaluated through an application that involves electromagnetic-tissue interactions: MRI (due to it being an available resource). The developed phantom was filled with media possessing electromagnetic constitutive parameters that correspond to biological tissues at ~297 MHz. A preliminary comparison between an in-vivo human volunteer (based on whom the anthropomorphic head phantom was created) and various phantoms types, one being the anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom, were performed using a 7 Tesla human MRI scanner. RESULTS: Echo planar imaging was performed and minimal ghosting and fluctuations were observed using the proposed anthropomorphic phantom. The magnetic field distributions (during MRI experiments at 7 Tesla) and the scattering parameter (measured using a network analyzer) were most comparable between the anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom and an in-vivo human volunteer. CONCLUSION: The developed anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom can be used as a resource to various researchers in applications that involve electromagnetic-biological tissue interactions such as MRI.