Design and Characterization of a Tissue-Mimicking Phantom for Ultrasonic Elastography

Tissue-mimicking phantoms are essential for the investigation of ultrasonic elastography. A modified polyacrylamide gel based tissue-mimicking phantom is developed in this paper. It shows greater stability than phantom based on physical gel, such as gelatin and agar. The elastic and echographic properties of this phantom are determined by the concentration of acrylamide and graphite powder respectively. Both indentation testing and transient elastography are used to characterize the elastic properties of this phantom. The results are almost consistent with each other. Our work indicate that Young's modulus of the polyacrylamide gel based tissue-mimicking phantom is similar to that of human soft tissue, which ranged from several kilopascal to a few tens of kilopascal.