Breast ultrasound phantom for image segmentation assessment

Ultrasound (US) phantoms are used to simulate the main acoustic properties of human soft tissues and are usually applied in guided biopsy training and equipment calibration. In this work it is presented an ultrasound phantom that mimics breast lesions with regular shape, which is a typical feature related to non malignancy. The phantom matrix was made of a mixture of water, agar, glycerin and graphite and PVC powders and the lesions were of polyacrylamide. The mimicking properties were US attenuation, propagation speed and density. The regularity of the edge lesions was evaluated using two morphometric parameters: (1) Overlap Ratio (RS), and (2) Normalized Residual Mean square value (nrv). They were found compatible with regular contours of real lesions.