CT phantom for development of robotic Interventional Radiology

There is a surgical method called Interventional Radiology (IVR) as one of lung cancer treatments. It has a problem that doctors are exposed to radiation because IVR is conducted in CT apparatus. In order to avoid the problem, a robotic IVR system that doctors conduct the puncture with a robot is developed. An operation test is necessary to develop the robotic IVR system, however, an experiment with real patients is rejected based on ethic regulation. Therefore, a phantom is used for experiments instead of patients. A phantom is a model of human used for both evaluation and adjustment of medical imaging equipments such as CT and MRI. However, ready-made phantoms can not be punctured, because they are only aimed to radiography and their surface are hard. Therefore a phantom for CT-IVR which can be punctured is developed.