Development and improvement of Breast Phantoms with accessible materials

In Brazil, after non-melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer is the type of cancer that most affects women and the one with the highest number of deaths. It is known that early detection of the disease increases the chances of cure and reduces mortality, which is why studies have been conducted to improve the visualization and diagnosis of neoplasms in mammographic images. For the equipment to be properly tested and professionals trained without unnecessary exposure to radiation, the use of simulators, or phantoms, is essential. Considering the difficult access to these simulators, researchers have sought to develop solutions using more accessible materials, as done by Sousa, (2017). The phantom, projected in their work to resemble breast tissue as closely as possible, has layers composed of gel paraffin and PVC films, distributed unevenly to simulate heterogeneously dense regions, according to their concentration. However, it was noted that, over time, the plates showed some deformation and differences in size between one another, resulting in irregular edges when they were superimposed for image acquisition. The objective of this work is, therefore, to reduce the deformation of the layers, using materials that are more resistant than paraffin, and to standardize the shape of the plates, with 3D printed molds, minimizing the irregularity of the edges. To maintain the simulation quality of the previously developed prototypes, the attributes of the images obtained from the phantoms developed by Sousa, (2017), and those produced in this study were extracted and arranged in bar charts to verify their similarity. It was observed that the phantoms made in this work, using beeswax and paraffin, showed high similarity to Angélica’s phantom, and are also more resistant to deformation.