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QRM-Cardio-Phantom
A calibration standard for cardiac CT. Investigate the influence of scan parameters on the detectability of calcifications. Achieve reproducible scoring results.
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​The QRM-Cardio-CT-Phantom is designed in a modular construction principle. The phantom is made up of two parts:
the anthropomorphic thorax phantom body, QRM-Thorax, and the cardiac calcification insert QRM-CCI.

QRM-Thorax comprises artificial lung lopes, a spine insert, and shell of soft tissue equivalent material. The plastics used in this anthropomorphic phantom mimic human tissues in the thorax with respect to density and attenuation characteristics (optimized for 120 kV).
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The cylindrical cardiac calcification insert, QRM-CCI, contains nine cylindrical calcifications in variing size and hydroxyapatite (HA) density (see Table next side), and two larger calibration inserts.
One of them is made of water equivalent material, the other one contains hydroxyapatite in addition. They are embedded in a tissue-equivalent solid of typically 35HU(+/- 5 HU) at 120 kV.







In order to obtain absolute values for the calcium mass, a calibration measurement with the central calibration insert of known hydroxyapatite (HA) density of 200 mg HA/cm³ can be carried out. The water equivalent insert serves as a further calibration standard. In practice the CT number of water should always be checked under the given modalities. If its measured HU value deviates from zero, the known deviation can be taken into account in the applied scoring method.

Specifications

Phantom weight (total) ................. 3620 g
Diameter of cardiac insert ............ 100 mm
Hight of cardiac insert ................. 100 mm
Weight of cardiac insert ............... 880 g
Base material .............................. resin
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The standardQRMthorax has to be ordered
at once or separately:

QRM-Cardio-Phantom
or
QRM-Thorax + QRM-CCI