(Saturday, 4/4/2020) [Mountain Time (GMT-6)]
Purpose: Economical Edible Phantoms for MRI Brachytherapy Imaging – Our department keeps up with MRI imaging techniques for HDR cervical cancer brachytherapy by using a low cost edible tissue equivalent phantom. Grocery store whole chickens stuffed with raw hamburger meat are excellent tissue equivalent phantoms for MRI imaging. We used a whole chicken filled with hamburger to optimize MRI imaging for a titanium brachytherapy tandem and ring applicator with the OrionTM HDR MRI Lumen Marker. The HDR marker is a sealed high-density polyethylene tube containing cobalt chloride: N-Acetylcysteine saline solution and had not been tested with titanium applicators.
Methods: The chicken phantom was used to optimize T2 SPACE and T1 MPRAGE image sequences with a titanium HDR ring and tandem applicator and an OrionTM HDR MRI Lumen Marker for our 1.5 T Siemens MRI Scanner. A whole chicken was filled with raw hamburger meat. The lumen marker was inserted into the titanium applicators and the applicators where inserted into the chicken cavity filled with hamburger. The chicken phantom with the applicators were place in a plastic bowel and covered with plastic food wrap. For the best Signal-to-Noise Radio, a Pelvis MRI Coil was placed on top of the bowl. T2 SPACE and T1 MPRAGE image sequences were optimized to see the contrast of the marker in the applicator using the chicken phantom.
Results: The chicken was a successful tissue equivalent phantom for MRI scanning and was able to show marker contrast in the applicator. We were able to optimize MRI images techniques specifically for our HDR applicators and MRI scanner.
Conclusion: The chicken phantom is perfect for optimizing brachytherapy MRI imaging techniques. We are working on a vegetarian alternative phantom. The next chicken frontier will be to use the chicken phantom to verify MR-CT image registration.
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