I am working on a deep brain stimulation project and wanted to measure temperature rise in the brain when electrodes are inserted. I am looking for a commercially available phantom that has the same thermal properties as the brain for accurate temperature rise measurements.
Please let me know if you know of any such phantom gels.
Thank you!
Ami,
I know of no suppliers, but it would appear that the bulk thermal conductivity is around 0.52 W/m/K
http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/research/Thermal.pdf
This is in the region of commercial silicone elastomers - and with luck one might find one that also is a fair match for the rather high specific heat capacity.
On reflection, water-based gels and colloids would be a better match, for casting your own specimen cubes.
Good luck!
Ami,
The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the best way to mimic the brain's high water content (you have to match thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity to reflect the temperature profile that a heat source would generate) would indeed be a slab of gelatine.
One could need to adulterate it in some way to tune the thermal conductivity up or down at a given density (and thus a given specific heat capacity. Tricky.
On reflection, I'd make a gel or two (with known thermal properties) and then use them to validate a dumb 3D Fourier model for how the temperature would vary with r and time. Once you've got the model, you can apply it to almost anything.
The experimental work is most useful, I reckon, for the tricky things that might happen at the interface of the tissue and the gel/brain mimic.
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