One major problem in surgical intervention on soft tissue is the collateral changing of the situs morphology during the treatment. This could only be solved by introducing an attending measurement modality. The project will provide the basis to support the surgeon with revised sonographic information on the actual situs status for getting better surgical results in neck surgery. Methods of photogrammetric measurement will be used to acquire the deformation and compressibility of cervical tissue in different positions of the head of test persons. Compared to tissue shift in other anatomical regions e.g. abdomen, the anatomical structures of the neck have a high inter- and intraindividual stability.
Parameterised by these measurements a corresponding neck phantom will be composed. To guarantee the same behaviour of the different anatomical cervical structures represented in this phantom based on gelatine with embeddedadditional mix of viscose, rayon staple and fibers. Thus, one can replicate compressibility and displacement behavior of characteristic tissue as well as the specific water content of the tissue for acoustic transduction. The neck phantom is made for establishing algorithms for sonographic aided re-evaluation of cervical 3D-CT/MRI data. The sonographic data allow an ongoing matching of homotopy equivalence of the radiological acquired topography. Different operation settings regarding “Navigated Targeted Endoscopic Guided Surgery” (NATEGS) to prevent major patient damage or achieve less traumatic procedure can be evaluated using this phantom. Especially endoscopic assisted surgery like the ABBA (axillobilateral breast approach) method for the thyroid gland need the support of permanently monitoring e.g. using sonography.