A breast prosthesis, produced with a gelatinous material that is similar to biological tissue, was developed to train radiologist physicians to perform ultrasound-guided biopsies, required to diagnose cancer. Called a breast phantom, the simulator has eight internal structures that represent, in color, six different types of lesions. The aim of the simulator, developed by the Physics Department of the Ribeirão Preto School of Philosophy, Sciences and Literature of the University of São Paulo (USP), under the coordination of professor Antônio Adilton Carneiro, is to hone the skills of the radiologist, who must operate the ultrasound while also guiding the needle that is to remove the tissue fragment for examination. Before being commercially produced by Figlabs, a company housed in the Supera incubator in Ribeirão Preto, the phantom was tested at the Clinicas Hospital of the USP Medical School in that city. “An important property of this simulator is that if it is perforated during the training, it can be thermally reconstructed,” says Thiago Almeida, director of Figlabs, who presented the prosthesis at the First Innovation Fair at USP, held in August in São Paulo.
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