Page 41 - Campus Technology, January/February 2020

Undergraduate research scholar Meagan Moore utilized data from her research with Project Phantom to create science-based art.
$40,000), are available in only a few standard sizes, and are limited by geometric design. Personalized anthropomorphic phantoms could be useful for quality assurance in the clinic when treating a patient with non-standard anatomy such as medical implants, amputations or obesity. People of all body types get cancer, but no personalized full body phantoms exist.
Previous students of Newhauser’s had begun work on 3D printing of human anatomy to address this radiotherapy issue. “Meagan’s big contribution has been to figure out how to print a life-sized, personalized replica of an actual person we scanned using 3D printing technologies,” Newhauser explained. “There was a lot of work and ingenuity in practical engineering aspects to make this thing work,” he noted. They had to be able to move it, so it couldn’t be made of solid plastic or it would be too heavy. It had to be a shell they could fill with water, so it had to be water-tight, but they need to have measurement instruments inside to characterize the radiation beams. “Meagan powered through challenge after challenge on the technical engineering side,” he said.
Newhauser said Moore’s skill set has allowed her to function in a team environment and reach out to people she doesn’t know and ask for help. “Her combination of tenacity and
interpersonal skills has allowed her to address things like water-tightness, big printers that are broken, and working with a team and vendors to get things fixed,” he said. “Sometimes that takes a lot of diplomacy.” For instance, selecting printing materials that are human-tissue substitutes has been a challenge. “She has rolled up her sleeves and gotten into the materials science aspects when needed. This project has allowed her to develop a nice combination of scientific ability, engineering ability, and the ability to work well in a team and motivate others to collaborate.”
Just transporting the phantom to Seattle where it would be tested proved a challenge. “I spent a weekend dissecting part of a transport coffin that someone had gotten from a friend who is a mortician,” Moore recalled. “We built a coffin to transport the model across the country securely, because we only had a certain window of time to make sure it got there in one piece.”
Moore even tells a story about improvising with chewing gum: After flying from Baton Rouge to Seattle to meet with oncology specialists and use their radiation therapy testing equipment, she noticed in a CT image that the water level in the model was a little low. She found a small hole in the crotch area.
“We didn’t have anything on hand that would
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