Creating Low-Cost Phantoms for Needle Manipulation Training in Interventional Radiology Procedures

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Radiology
• Medical Simulation

Background:

• Image-guided procedures are integral to radiology practice.
• Effective training of radiology residents in these procedures is crucial for developing competence.
• Low-fidelity phantoms have been suggested as suitable tools for teaching novice trainees.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a series of phantoms for teaching core skills in image-guided procedures to novice radiology residents.
• To demonstrate the utility of these phantoms for specific procedures.

Main Methods:

• Development and utilization of a range of inexpensive, low-fidelity gelatin-based phantoms.
• Phantoms designed to train skills for ultrasound-guided biopsy, ultrasound-guided vascular puncture, cone-beam CT drainage, and fluoroscopy-guided lumbar puncture.
• Phantoms also used to teach the parallax effect for determining relative position in fluoroscopy.

Main Results:

• The proposed phantoms effectively train core skills required for various image-guided procedures.
• Gelatin-based phantoms provide a viable and cost-effective training solution for novices.
• Phantoms are valuable training tools when the target audience is considered.

Conclusions:

• Low-fidelity gelatin-based phantoms are appropriate for training novice radiology residents in fundamental image-guided procedure skills.
• These phantoms enable early development of competence in essential interventional techniques.
• Phantoms are a valuable adjunct to resident training, particularly for foundational skill acquisition.