Construction and validation of an infant chest phantom for paediatric computed tomography

Paediatric imaging protocols should be carefully optimised to maintain the desired image quality while minimising the delivered patient dose. A paediatric chest phantom was designed, constructed and evaluated to optimise chest CT examinations for infants. The phantom was designed to enable dosimetry and image quality measurements within the anthropomorphic structure. It was constructed using tissue equivalent materials to mimic thoracic structures of infants, aged 0-6 months. The phantom materials were validated across a range of diagnostic tube voltages with resulting CT numbers found equivalent to paediatric tissues observed via a survey of clinical paediatric chest studies. The phantom has been successfully used to measure radiation dose and evaluate various image quality parameters for paediatric specific protocols.