3D printed pediatric head phantom for assessing deep epileptic sources localization

Saeed Jahromi; Glykeria Sdoukopoulou; Rupesh Kumar Chikara; Steven M Stufflebeam; Mark P Ottensmeyer; Gianluca De Novi; Christos Papadelis

doi:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2026.111449

3D printed pediatric head phantom for assessing deep epileptic sources localization

Comput Biol Med. 2026 Feb 1:202:111449. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2026.111449. Epub 2026 Jan 9.

Authors

Saeed Jahromi¹, Glykeria Sdoukopoulou¹, Rupesh Kumar Chikara², Steven M Stufflebeam³, Mark P Ottensmeyer⁴, Gianluca De Novi⁴, Christos Papadelis⁵

Affiliations

¹ Neurosciences Research Center, Jane and John Justin Institute for Mind Health, Cook Children's Health Care System, Fort Worth, TX, 76104, USA; Department of Bioengineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76010, USA.
² Neurosciences Research Center, Jane and John Justin Institute for Mind Health, Cook Children's Health Care System, Fort Worth, TX, 76104, USA; Department of Bioengineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76010, USA; Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
³ Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Mass General Brigham & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; HST Affiliated Faculty, Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences & Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Neurosciences Research Center, Jane and John Justin Institute for Mind Health, Cook Children's Health Care System, Fort Worth, TX, 76104, USA; Department of Bioengineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76010, USA; Burnett School of Medicine, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA. Electronic address: christos.papadelis@cookchildrens.org.

PMID: 41518794
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2026.111449

Abstract

Objective: Assessing the localization accuracy of electric and magnetic source imaging (ESI/MSI) for deep brain sources using a 3D-printed head phantom.

Methods: We developed a realistic pediatric head phantom preserving brain, skull, and scalp properties with implanted sources in clinically relevant deep brain locations. Localization accuracy of ESI/MSI was assessed across varying noise levels using dipole fitting and dynamic statistical parametric mapping (dSPM).

Results: The phantom generated realistic MEG and EEG data resembling actual epilepsy patient recordings. MSI showed superior accuracy to ESI for the deep tangential insular source (dipole: ∼17 vs. ∼33 mm; dSPM: ∼24 vs. ∼32 mm). While ESI-ECD localized some radial sources well (e.g. ∼9 mm for brainstem), its dSPM struggled to localize deep sources (e.g. insula and amygdala). Both modalities found the radial thalamus source most challenging to localize.

Conclusions: MSI outperformed ESI for localizing deep tangential sources; yet, both techniques struggled to localize deep radial sources. For point-like sources, dipole fitting delivered the highest accuracy (∼9 mm, ESI for brainstem), whereas averaged dSPM was superior for sources with distributed-source behavior (∼13 mm, MSI for orbital gyrus).

Significance: 3D Printed realistic head phantoms can aid assessing the accuracy of ESI/MSI and selecting appropriate methods for different clinical scenarios.

Keywords: 3D printing; Electric source imaging; Magnetic source imaging; Phantom; Source localization.

MeSH terms

Brain* / diagnostic imaging
Brain* / physiopathology
Child
Electroencephalography*
Epilepsy* / diagnostic imaging
Epilepsy* / physiopathology
Head* / diagnostic imaging
Humans
Magnetoencephalography*
Male
Phantoms, Imaging*
Printing, Three-Dimensional*