title: Recipes to make organic phantoms for diffusive optical spectroscopy.
abstract: Three recipes are presented to make tissue constituent-equivalent phantoms of water and lipids. Different approaches to prepare the emulsion are proposed. Nature phantoms are made using no emulsifying agent, but just a professional disperser; instead Agar and Triton phantoms are made using agar or Triton X-100, respectively, as agents to emulsify water and lipids. Different water-to-lipid ratios ranging from 30% to 70% by mass were tested. A broadband time-resolved diffuse optical spectroscopy system was used to characterize the phantoms in terms of optical properties and composition. For some water/lipid ratios the emulsion fails or the phantom has limited lifetime, but in most cases the recipes provide phantoms with a high degree of homogeneity [coefficient of variation (CV) of 4.6% and 1.5% for the absorption and reduced scattering coefficient, respectively] and good reproducibility (CV of 8.3% and 12.4% for absorption and reduced scattering coefficient, respectively).
authors.affiliation: Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, Milano 20133, Italy. giovanna.quarto@mail.polimi.it
authors.forename: Giovanna
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Quarto
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pifferi
authors.forename: Ilaria
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bargigia
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Farina
authors.forename: Rinaldo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cubeddu
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Taroni
mesh_terms: D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D009391:Nephelometry and Turbidimetry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013057:Spectrum Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D008055:Lipids; D009930:Organic Chemicals; D014867:Water