Biomimetic phantom for cardiac diffusion MRI

The rapid growth of diffusion MRI has driven demand for phantoms to aid development of novel pulse sequences and models of diffusion, and to improve quality assurance of data. Several diffusion phantoms have been proposed, mostly based on geometric arrangements of polymer fibres. However, it has proven challenging to replicate the high anisotropy found in biological samples. Furthermore, many phantoms utilise solid fibres, which contrasts with the cellular structure of tissue containing a distribution of pores. One promising method based on co-electrospinning,produces hollow fibres which are perfused with an MRI-visible substrate. This yields physiological values of mean apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional anisotropy (FA) . With the majority of diffusion phantoms designed to simulate brain tissue, we have developed a novel phantom designed to simulate the specific fibre orientations and diffusion properties of the heart.