Model for pre-surgical intracerebral hemorrhage planning

Project Overview

Intracerebral hemorrhaging (ICH) is an extremely dangerous condition that without intervention can ultimately lead to death. Recently, new methods have been developed for evacuating clots formed as a result of ICH. However, the stiffness of the brain clots can be very different from patient to patient, which complicates the decision of what method of evacuation to utilize. Professor Walter Block presented the team with the challenge of designing a brain phantom that will eventually be used to generate a database that allows neurosurgeons to compare MRE phantom images to MRE images of ICH patients. By comparing the patient’s scan to the database of phantom images, the surgeon is able to determine the stiffness of the clot prior to surgery, and decide on the best method of evacuation. Other brain phantoms have been created, but none target ICH specifically or include a gel-gel interface. Our solution is to create an alginate phantom with “clots” inside of base gels to prove materials of different stiffness can be differentiated in MRE images.