In recent years there has been increasing interest in development of consensus, tissue-phantom-based approaches for assessment of biophotonic imaging systems, with the primary goal of facilitating clinical translation of novel optical technologies. Well-characterized test methods based on tissue phantoms can provide useful tools for performance assessment, thus enabling standardization and device inter-comparison during preclinical development as well as quality assurance and re-calibration in the clinical setting. In this review, we study the role of phantom-based test methods as described in consensus documents such as international standards for established imaging modalities including X-ray CT, MRI and ultrasound. Specifically, we focus on three image quality characteristics - spatial resolution, spatial measurement accuracy and image uniformity - and summarize the terminology, metrics, phantom design/construction approaches and measurement/analysis procedures used to assess these characteristics. Phantom approaches described are those in routine clinical use and tend to have simplified morphology and biologically-relevant physical parameters. Finally, we discuss the potential for applying knowledge gained from existing consensus documents in the development of standardized, phantom-based test methods for optical coherence tomography.

Date Published: 28 February 2012
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8215, Design and Quality for Biomedical Technologies V, 82150D (28 February 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.912371

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8215:
Design and Quality for Biomedical Technologies V
Ramesh Raghavachari; Rongguang Liang, Editor(s)