Fabrication of a clavicle phantom for radiography using hydrated lime

Abstract

Epidemiological studies indicate that clavicle fractures are predominant, particularly in men. Hydrated lime was found to be a suitable substance to mimic the bone composition. It is durable and has a good X-ray image intensity compared with that of a real bone. In contrast, silicone exhibits an X-ray diffraction spectrum similar to that of soft tissues. In this paper, phantoms with different sites of clavicle fractures were fabricated using hydrated lime, for education and quality assurance purposes. Phantoms with different pathologies of the left clavicle were fabricated via a multi-step technique. The clavicle phantoms were broken at different sites, representing most fractures reported in the literature. The clavicle phantom was radiographed along with the real clavicle bone using an X-ray machine (Definium 6000, General electric, 2009) with imaging parameters of 53 kV, 100 mA, and 1.2 mAs. This was performed to compare their structures and densities. The resulting mean grey values were 243.03, 248.97, and 253.53 for the real bone, bone fabricated using hydrated lime, and fabricated bone coated with silicone, respectively. This indicates a contrast of 0.02 between the real and fabricated bones and a contrast of 0.04 between the real and fabricated bones coated with silicone. Similar effective atomic number between bone and lime and low contrast values between the real bone and fabricated phantoms support the possibility of successful fabrication of clavicle phantoms using hydrated lime, for the purposes of education and quality assurance.