Integrated endovascular phantom

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Endovascular surgery is becoming widely deployed for many critical procedures and developing phantoms for use in these procedures has many benefits in surgical training, as well as in the surgery process itself. This project will focus on designing, based on the specification of physicians, a compact phantom that can be used in training for endovascular surgery. During past and related research projects the phantoms used are both expensive and not customized for specific applications. Thus, in order to guarantee the required performance efficiently we need to develop: an accurate Endovascular Phantom of the arteries; and integrate the arteries phantom into a larger compact phantom component representing the human abdomen, so that we can have a realistic mechanism embedding stable arteries inside. The proposed integrated phantom is necessary not just for aesthetic reasons, but also to precisely and consistently secure the placements of the internal arteries. This process is not only cumbersome and time consuming to set up, but also unreliable in terms of guaranteeing the stability of the flexible blood vessel inside the body phantom between repeated uses. Unlike the phantoms designed for and used in previous training systems, the proposed phantom will be specifically designed for endovascular surgical training, where a catheter is inserted into the blood vessels from the femoral. Since the accuracy in navigation and bending of the catheter inside the vessels require the support of the artery walls, the material properties chosen to fabricate the artery phantom is critical for the desired procedures. The phantom needs to accurately represent the arteries in both geometry and texture material. The customized phantoms can be used in a pre-operative practice session. Practice on customized phantoms will familiarize the surgeons with the unique conditions of individual patients and thus improve surgical performance. In the long term, there will be better healthcare services and economic benefits in Canada.