Creating Low-cost Brain Phantoms

Neurosurgical preoperative planning and training require high-fidelity models that accurately replicate the complexity of brain anatomy. Although commercial phantoms offer high visual and mechanical accuracy, they remain prohibitively expensive for training purposes.We present a method for matching tissue densities to suitable agarose gel concentrations and demonstrate a simple procedure for creating a multi-tissue, low-cost, and easily adjustable brain phantom. We also investigated storage stabilities for various agarose gel concentrations, finding that water-based gels at concentrations of 1% or higher exhibited minimal mass loss and maintained structural integrity over time when stored submerged in regular water.