A pneumatic phantom for mimicking respiration-induced artifacts in spinal MRI.

Purpose: To design a phantom capable of mimicking human respiration to serve as a testing platform for correction of the static and time-evolving magnetic field distortions typically encountered in MRI of the spinal cord.

Methods: An inflation system to mimic the air variation of the human lungs was constructed. The inflation system was linked to a phantom containing synthetic lungs and an ex vivo human spine.