Development of high fidelity liver and kidney phantom organs for use with robotic surgical systems

The development of high fidelity, anthropomorphically shaped physical phantom organs has a great potential to benefit novel robotic surgical systems by acting as a pre-clinical test bed to validate robotic performance. We present a manufacturing process and methodology to create inexpensive, anatomically accurate kidney and liver phantom organs from gelatin gel with Young´s moduli and ultrasound (US) attenuation coefficients matched to those of a porcine kidney and liver. The ration of gelatin to water was varied in order to produce eight gelatin gel samples with a Young´s modulus ranging from 8.88 kPa to 76.84. Fresh porcine liver and kidney organs were tested ex vivo to determine their Young´s moduli and US attenuation coefficients. A 3D printer created an anthropomorphically accurate kidney mold based on x-ray computed tomography images of a human abdomen. The difference between the porcine and gelatin phantom Young´s modulus was less than 2.1 kPa for both the kidney and liver. The US attenuation differed at most by 0.577 dB(cm·MHz)^-1 when comparing the phantom material to the porcine organs. The volume of anthropomorphically shaped gelatin phantom kidney was within 5% of the volume of the virtual kidney organ which was constructed from x-ray computed tomography. With a total material cost of approximately $0.70 per organ we foresee these organs to be used in a disposable fashion to facilitate the development of novel surgical robotic systems.