Molding the Future: A Novel Method for Developing Custom Silicone Molds for the Creation of Sonographic Ballistics...

The frequent utilization of ultrasound-guided procedures in emergency medicine has led to an increasing need for specialized sonolucent procedural phantoms. The prohibitive costs and limited diversity of commercially available task trainers has led educators to develop numerous homemade phantoms. Ballistics gelatin is a favored material for homemade phantoms due its sonographic appearance and resistance to degradation. Unfortunately, ballistics gelatin must be poured at high temperatures and, therefore, requires molds that can withstand such heat. As a result, commercially available cake pans are frequently used, resulting in lower-fidelity phantoms devoid of realistic external anatomy.

The authors aimed to describe the creation of inexpensive, heat-resistant, custom silicone molds that can be used to create a variety of anatomically realistic ballistics gelatin phantoms.

A variety of silicone molds were developed from plaster casts of live volunteers and anatomic models. The use of live models allowed for a high level of customization of the resultant silicone mold with regard to anatomic region and body positioning. The silicone molds are used to create a variety of sonolucent procedural ballistics gelatin phantoms used within our department.

Silicone can be used to create custom, reusable, heat-resistant molds, which subsequently allow for the creation of ballistics gelatin phantoms with realistic external anatomy.