Additive Fabrication of a Vascular 3D Phantom for Stereotactic Radiosurgery of Arteriovenous Malformations

Abstract

In this study, an efficient methodology for manufacturing a realistic three-dimensional (3D) cerebrovascular phantom resembling a brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM) for applications in stereotactic radiosurgery is presented. The AVM vascular structure was 3D reconstructed from brain computed tomography (CT) data acquired from a patient. For the phantom fabrication, stereolithography was used to produce the AVM model and combined with silicone casting to mimic the brain parenchyma surrounding the vascular structure. This model was made with tissues-equivalent materials for radiology. The hollow vascular system of the phantom was filled with a contrast agent usually employed on patients for CT scans. The radiological response of the phantom was tested and compared with the one of the clinical case. The constructed model demonstrated to be a very accurate physical representation of the AVM and its vasculature and good morphological consistency was observed between the model and the patient-specific source anatomy. These results suggest that the proposed method has potential to be used to fabricate patient-specific phantoms for neurovascular radiosurgery applications and medical research.

Development of a patient-specific chest computed tomography imaging phantom with realistic lung lesions using silicone casting and three-dimensional printing

“…However, their phantom cannot reflect depth information as a medical image phantom because only a limited cross-section of the image was shaped. Legnani et al developed a vascular 3D phantom for stereotactic radiosurgery of arteriovenous malformations 30 . This study suggests that the proposed method has the potential for producing patient-specific models for neurovascular radiosurgery applications and medical research.…”

Radiotherapy on-chip: microfluidics for translational radiation oncology

“…41,42 Specifically, the characterization of the response of PDMS blends to various types of radiation exposure (including gamma radiation) demonstrated both their stability and water equivalence (ρ = 0.97 g cc −1 ). [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50] This latter property specifies that PDMS density is very close to that of water (within 3%), ensuring that radiation interacts with PDMS like with water, physiological fluids and tissues on which dose-planning software are based. As such, the material can be easily modeled with standard clinical treatment planning software and is highly suitable for dosimetric planning and delivery at therapeutic dose-levels.…”

“…2B and C). [44][45][46][47][48][49] Similarly, microfluidic devices can easily be incorporated into clinically relevant experimental setups, such as treatment table supports (Fig. 2B-D).…”

Hybrid Additive Fabrication of a Transparent Liver with Biosimilar Haptic Response for Preoperative Planning

“…The refined models were then used in conjunction with that of the parenchyma to design and generate a 3D mould for silicone casting. This was engineered as a four part We fabricated hollow vascular structures in view of contrast media injection for metrological validation of the prototypes to provide a realistic version of the organ anatomy [32]. The native models of the vessels were processed using the free software Autodesk Meshmixer (http://www.meshmixer.com, accessed on 18 September 2021) to generate a 1 mm thick wall around the venous and arterial lumen, which was then eliminated using Boolean subtractions to obtain the empty vessels.…”

“…The vascular structures and biliary tree were directly printed by means of stereolithographic 3D printing using low hardness commercial photopolymers, employing a Form2 printing apparatus (Formlabs), equipped with a 405 nm wavelength laser [32]. The orientation of the different parts with respect to the printing plate was carefully selected using the printer slicer to optimise the number and configuration of supports.…”