A realistic digital phantom for perfusion C-arm CT based on MRI data

Abstract

CTP is an important imaging modality for diagnosis of ischemic stroke, which is computed from of a series of consecutive CT-scans during the injection of contrast agent. Contrast flow at any point in space can be tracked as minor changes in intensity over a period of about 40 seconds to one minute, represented as a time-attenuation curve (TAC) for every voxel. This work presents an isotropic, dense, physiologically realistic and dynamic brain phantom for CT perfusion. The phantom is based on MRI scans of a volunteer and is freely available for download.