Characterization of Tissue Equivalent Materials Using 3D Printing for Patient-Specific DQA in Radiation Therapy

Abstract

Three-dimensional printing technology has the advantage of facilitating the construction of complex three-dimensional shapes. For this reason, it is widely used in medical and radiological fields. However, few materials with high electron density similar to that of bone exist for fabricating a human phantom. In this study, commercially available filament materials were used with an FDM 3D printer to perform delivery quality assurance (DQA) and were evaluated for medical use. For the bone filament material, BaSO4 was synthesized in five ratios of 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, and 10% with 40% PBAT and 50~58% PLA. The electron density for the 3D printing material fabricated was obtained using kV energy CT and compared with the electron density of human organs and bones. The radiation beam properties of the 3D printed structures were analyzed as films for treatment using a linear accelerator. As a result, by changing the infill density of the material, it was possible to produce a material similar to the density of human organs, and a homogeneous bone material with HU values ranging from 371 ± 9 to 1013 ± 28 was produced. The 3D printing material developed in this study is expected to be usefully applied to the development of a patient-specific phantom to evaluate the accuracy of radiotherapy.

Keywords

• 3D printing technology
• fused deposition modeling (FDM)
• tissue equivalent materials
• delivery quality assurance (DQA)
• computed tomography (CT)
• linear accelerator