Injury-mimicking Ultrasound Phantoms
Injury mimicking ultrasound phantoms are training devices that can emulate pre- and post-injury conditions at specific regions of human anatomy. As such, they are likely to be useful tools for teaching medical personnel how to recognize trauma conditions from ultrasound images. Due to the increased use of portable ultrasound systems, earlier diagnosis of internal trauma will be feasible at locations such as traffic accidents, earthquakes, battlefields and terrorist attacks.
An injury mimicking ultrasound phantom for the peritoneal cavity has been designed, implemented and tested, by Matthew Rowan, then graduate student in Mechanical Engineering. This phantom uses acoustically and mechanically accurate tissue mimicking materials to simulate the presence or absence of blunt trauma and interstitial states such that the level of trauma may be controlled. A specified volume of fluid was injected at a controlled rate into the phantom to create an injury state. The fluid volume increase between the adjacent organs, when emulating an injury, was statistically significant. The utility for trauma training has been verified by emergency medicine professionals. Ultimately, this phantom would be ideal as a training device for emergency medical personnel to use in conjunction with portable ultrasound systems.
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Comparison of external scanning membrane in pre-injury and post-injury configuration
Last modified: March 11, 2008 13:59:18