Design and application of an MR reference phantom for multicentre lung imaging trials.

Introduction: As there is an increasing number of multicentre lung imaging studies with MRI in patients, dedicated reference phantoms are required to allow for the assessment and comparison of image quality in multi-vendor and multi-centre environments. However, appropriate phantoms for this purpose are so far not available commercially. It was therefore the purpose of this project to design and apply a cost-effective and simple to use reference phantom which addresses the specific requirements for imaging the lungs with MRI.