Study of suitability of new materials for use with physical breast phantoms

Emerging X-ray breast imaging applications require the use of realistic physical three-dimensional phantoms are breast CT, phase-contrast mammography and the existing breast Tomosynthesis, dedicated to screen as early as possible and diagnose cancer in breast. However, manufacturing of such phantoms meets difficulties related to the current technology, suitable materials, manufacturing precision, format of the software models. This paper reports the preliminary results from simulation studies aiming to investigate mixtures prepared from epoxy resin and iodine powder in specific ratios as tissue substitutes for X-ray breast imaging. For each material, mass and linear attenuation coefficients were calculated for the X-ray energy range from 10 to 32 keV. Mixtures of epoxy resin and up to 1.8% iodine powder turn to be a suitable option for tissue substitutes. Selected materials were used in simulations of breast lesions with blurry edges.