Development of Dynamic Anthropomorphic Heart Phantom (DHAP)

Abstract

This project presents development of a realistic dynamic anthropomorphic heart phantom (DHAP), which can mimic any heart rhythm of the patient while waiting in the holding area. The dynamic heart phantom driven in real time from the patient’s ECG or built in simulator; then can be scanned in the CT to establish the best gating protocol suitable to current heart rhythms of the patient. Once the protocol is established the patient can be scanned only applying single gating technique; hence significant radiation dose can be reduced for these patients.

The phantom can also support research studies addressing the detection issues due to cardiac and lung motion in space and time domains. Thus phantom can also serve as a useful tool in building CT and Digital Tomosynthesis reconstruction algorithms for improving image quality and detection capability of the equipment.