Mimicry of skeletal muscle tissue with layered phantom for ultrasound imaging

Ultrasound technology is rapidly advancing diagnostics to study human internal tissue. Ethics regarding scanning of human subjects led to the development of ultrasound phantoms, which are prevalent in clinical and research settings to emulate unique human tissues. Skeletal muscle and fat ultrasound phantoms lack progress despite the rise of clinical ultrasound imaging techniques for these applications. This paper presents a low-cost, easily replicable skeletal muscle and fat ultrasound phantom to study these tissues for clinical applications. Experimental studies took ultrasound images of phantoms with varying properties which were analyzed and compared to ultrasound images of human tissue. The results show the proposed phantom is an accurate simulation of these tissues.