Nanodiamond phantoms mimicking human liver: perspective to calibration of T1 relaxation time in magnetic resonance imaging

Phantoms of biological tissues are materials that mimic the properties of real tissues. This study shows the development of phantoms with nanodiamond particles for calibration of T1 relaxation time in magnetic resonance imaging. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a commonly used and non-invasive method of detecting pathological changes inside the human body. Nevertheless, before a new MRI device is approved for use, it is necessary to calibrate it properly and to check its technical parameters. In this article, we present phantoms of tissue with diamond nanoparticles dedicated to magnetic resonance calibration. The method of producing phantoms has been described. As a result of our research, we obtained phantoms that were characterized by the relaxation time T1 the same as the relaxation time of the human tissue T1 = 810.5 ms. Furthermore, the use of diamond nanoparticles in phantoms allowed us to tune the T1 value of the phantoms which open the way to elaborated phantoms of other tissues in the future.