Computed Tomography-Assisted Study of the Liquid Contrast Agent’s Spread in a Hydrogel Phantom of the Brain Tissue

Abstract

Studying transport processes in the brain’s extracellular space is a complicated problem when considering the brain’s tissue. Tests of corresponding physical and mathematical problems, as well as the need for materials with cheap but realistic properties to allow for testing of drug delivery systems, lead to the development of artificial phantom media, one kind of which is explored in this work. We report results from quantifying the spread of a standard contrast agent used in clinical computed tomography, Iopromide, in samples of collagen-based hydrogels. Its pure variant as well as samples supplied with lipid and surfactant additives were explored. By comparing to solutions of the diffusion equation which reproduce these data, the respective diffusion coefficients were determined. It was shown that they are relevant to the range typical for living tissue, grow with elevation in the lipid content and diminish with growth in surfactant concentration.

Keywords

• hydrogel
• brain’s parenchyma phantom
• fluid flow
• diffusion
• computed tomography