Human brain right dissected lateral view showing gray matter (outer) and white matter (inner).
Credit: John A. Beal, LSU, via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and colleagues have developed a novel, anatomically accurate reference model of the human brain, entirely made from soft organic materials, for use in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The work revealed several major obstacles to fabricating anthropomorphic phantoms, including the persistent presence of “signal voids” – blank areas in the MRI images caused by the boundaries between different kinds of tissue mimics. And an innovative technique to mimic cerebral “microbleeds” that often accompany traumatic brain injuries (TBI) was not fully successful.
The team offers detailed descriptions of the now completed project, along with suggestions for alternative techniques, in the July 12, 2023 issue of PLOS ONE to encourage other groups to build on their experience.
Artificial reference objects that, when imaged, mimic the properties of real tissue – and thus can be used to calibrate MRI and other imaging systems for medical diagnosis and treatment – are called phantoms. NIST has pioneered numerous MRI phantoms, such as the recent breast phantom design that was rapidly and widely adopted. And it has been a world leader in “quantitative” MRI – which measures the types and intensities of signals from tissue – as opposed to “qualitative” approaches that chiefly rely on image contrast between adjacent areas.
But brain phantoms pose numerous special challenges, and to date “no 3D anthropomorphic brain structure suitable for whole-brain quantitative MRI has been developed,” the authors note. The NIST team, including partners from Mitre Corp., Hyperfine Inc., and the University of Colorado, has been ..
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