Tissue phantoms for multimodal approaches

Tissue phantoms with defined, reliable and reproducible characteristics are crucial for the evaluation of biomedical imaging systems. For multimodal approaches, various demands on tissue phantoms have to be met in order to satisfy the needs of all modalities. We present and discuss a hydrogel phantom that was created for combined Raman spectroscopic and optoacoustic measurements imposing optical as well as acoustic requirements on the phantom. In this phantom, defined concentrations of carotenes should be available in an optically scattering and absorbing matrix to test and validate the capability of this combination of methods to quantify specific biomolecules in tissue. The main requirements on this phantom were tissue-like acoustic properties, scalable optical attenuation and incorporation of Raman active target molecules. We used a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogel as the basic phantom material because of its suitable acoustic and optical characteristics but found that the incorporation of non-polar dyes like carotenoids in the hydrogel is difficult and the optical properties of the biomolecule are significantly altered by the hydrogel molecular environment and production procedure. We show and discuss challenges and solutions in the design process of a suitable tissue phantom.