Hybrid organosilicon/polyol phantoms for applications in biophotonics and beyond

Recent advances of medical technologies are demanding a new generation of phantoms that may encode the biophysical features needed for their aßeßment. Here, we propose hybrid materials based on emulsions of polydimethylsiloxane with glycerol or aqueous polyvinyl alcohol as a versatile platform for phantoms for applications such as optical, acoustic, magnetic resonance or X-ray imaging. These materials display intrinsic optical scattering, retain the acoustic features of polydimethylsiloxane, enable the inclusion of a broad taxonomy of hydrophobic and hydrophilic dyes of interest for photoacoustic imaging, may be suitable to simulate the cellularity of organs due to their peculiar microstructure, and, thanks to the poßibility to include aqueous solutions of metabolites, may be of interest for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography.