Comparison between the results of simulated mechanical imaging on software breast phantom and in vivo measurements

The focus of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating Perlin noise, a method that has previously been used to model the tissue distribution of software breast phantoms, when creating a 'compressible' software breast phantom used in finite element analysis. Several compressible phantoms were created to represent different stages of aging in a virtual patient when younger, fibroglandular tissue is more prevalent than adipose tissue. During the ageing process, this ratio changes so that the breast contains more adipose tissue and less fibroglandular tissue. When simulating the compression of these phantoms, the determined reaction forces on the simulated compression plate increase with higher breast density. The resulting reaction forces on the compression plates are well above the values from in vivo measurements performed by our research group. However, when considering the differences between the procedures in the two studies, the simulated results are arguably comparable to the in vivo measurements.