Fabrication of Low-cost Realistic Three-dimensional Static Kidney Phantom for Ultrasound-guided Biopsy Applications

BACKGROUND: The rapid growth of using ultrasound-guided interventional procedures, including biopsy and drainage, which considered painful procedures, leads to improving the practice cycle of ultrasound-guided procedures. Fabrication of low-cost tissue-mimicking phantoms that serve as a training tool medium for kidney needle biopsy procedures has dramatically overcome the drawbacks associated with these practices, such as reducing the number of miss lesions, medical errors, and recurrence rate as well as these phantoms are widely available and considered a good substitute for cadavers which were not always available and relativity expensive. However, several drawbacks are associated with current kidney phantom models, mainly the short shelf life and the high fabrication cost. METHODS: This study aims to fabricate a realistic three-dimensional static mature human kidney phantom from low cost and available material for training on ultrasound-guided interventional procedures mainly biopsy test; the material used to fabricate our model is the gelatin-agar mixture. RESULTS: This model proved that it is a tissue-mimicking material by measuring their acoustic properties which nearly the same as real human kidney tissue. CONCLUSION: The results of practicing interventional procedures on our phantom model showed good and easy uses for interventional procedures training as well as make it a preferable and economically affordable model.