APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR REPRESENTING ORGANISED TISSUE AND CONSTRUCTING CONFIGURABLE PHANTOMS OF SAME

Components and construction methods are described for constructing a wide variety of configurable phantoms for use in MR imaging. These phantoms generally comprise an outer housing; at least one support plate disposed within the outer housing and having a plurality of locations for selectively receiving at least one element allowing for configurable phantoms to be created; the at least one element having anisotropic diffusion, isotropic diffusion, and/or perfusion characteristics, the at least one element being releasably connected at one of the plurality of locations on the support plate; and a matrix material contained within the outer housing, the matrix material being an aqueous fluid, wherein during MR imaging, the presence of the aqueous fluid, and directionality of fluid molecular diffusion within or through the at least one element are recorded in MR images.