Low-cost fabrication of optical tissue phantoms for use in biomedical imaging

The rapid development of new optical imaging techniques is dependent on the availability of low-cost and easily reproducible standards for technique validation. This work describes a low-cost fabrication process of an agar gel-based phantom that may accurately simulate the optical properties of different human tissues at 532 and 630nm wavelengths. It was designed to match the optical properties of the brain, bladder wall, and lung tissues. These low-cost phantoms use agar powders dissolved in water as the bulk matrix. The latter is loaded with varying amounts of India ink, and aluminium oxide Al₂O₃ particles for optical absorption and scattering targets. The optical properties (absorption and scattering coefficients), the primary design factor and critical parameters of these phantoms were deduced from measurements of the total attenuation coefficients $$ . It is anticipated that the constructed tissue phantoms have the potential to be used as a reference standard since it's possible to preserve the optical properties in a period exceeding two years, under ideal storage conditions.