Planned intervention: On Wednesday April 3rd 05:30 UTC Zenodo will be unavailable for up to 2-10 minutes to perform a storage cluster upgrade.
Published February 10, 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Thermoplastic 3D printing technology using a single filament for producing realistic patient-derived breast models

  • 1. Department of Medical Equipment, Electronic and Information Technologies in Healthcare, Medical University of Varna, Varna, Bulgaria
  • 2. Morphé, Thessaloniki, Greece
  • 3. Department of Imaging Diagnostics, Interventional Radiology and Radiotherapy, Medical University of Varna, Bulgaria

Description

ABSTRACT

Objective. This work describes an approach for producing physical anthropomorphic breast phantoms from clinical patient data using three-dimensional (3D) fused-deposition modelling (FDM) printing. Approach. The source of the anthropomorphic model was a clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) patient image set, which was segmented slice by slice into adipose and glandular tissues, skin and tumour formations; thus obtaining a four component computational breast model. The segmented tissues were mapped to specific Hounsfield Units (HU) values, which were derived from clinical breast Computed Tomography (CT) data. The obtained computational model was used as a template for producing a physical anthropomorphic breast phantom using 3D printing. FDM technology with only one polylactic acid filament was used. The physical breast phantom was scanned at Siemens SOMATOM Definition CT. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation were carried out to assess the clinical realism of CT slices of the physical breast phantom. Main results. The comparison between selected slices from the computational breast phantom and CT slices of the physical breast phantom shows similar visual x-ray appearance of the four breast tissue structures: adipose, glandular, tumour and skin. The results from the task-based evaluation, which involved three radiologists, showed a high degree of realistic clinical radiological appearance of the modelled breast components. Measured HU values of the printed structures are within the range of HU values used in the computational phantom. Moreover, measured physical parameters of the breast phantom, such as weight and linear dimensions, agreed very well with the corresponding ones of the computational breast model. Significance. The presented approach, based on a single FDM material, was found suitable for manufacturing of a physical breast phantom, which mimics well the 3D spatial distribution of the different breast tissues and their x-ray absorption properties. As such, it could be successfully exploited in advanced x-ray breast imaging research applications.

Files

Dukov_2022_Phys._Med._Biol._67_045008.pdf

Files (1.8 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:6f21dca297171f09b566bacd0cf94409
1.8 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is supplemented by
Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.5887359 (DOI)

Funding

PHENOMENO – PHYSICAL BREAST ANTHROPOMORPHIC MODELS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR THEIR PRODUCTION 101008020
European Commission