Synthetic Body Organs

[TEng89]

Hi,

I was planning to do a little experiement but I wanted to use materials which resembled the physical & chemical properties of actual organs for the experiment to be a bit more realistic.

I tried googling a bit, unfortunately I only get listings for organs which are made of plastic or prosthetics. I've seen CSI using the rubber like models for some scene reconstructions, unfortunately, I'm not completely sure what the material is called? Any pointers on what I need to be looking at?

[mith]

How does rubber resemble the chemical properties of actual organs?

[TEng89]

Mith - Hmm, that's something I should have thought about before posting. Nonetheless, I was reading some articles online and perhaps polyurethane is a better bet for the skin?

I don't want them to be exactly similar ... just more or less, like skin to be of a material which is thick and flexible, on ther other hand ... bone to be hard and rigid etc.

[mith]

It would be helpful to know what experiment you're running, and budget of course. But I think overall you're going to find more plastics than non-plastics just because they're usually unreactive towards the body(allergies and immune concerns). The rigidity can usually be altered by adding crosslinks.

[daniel.kurz]

To be as real as possible you need to mimic the physical properties first because looking at the chemical. The chemical depends on the application of the physical object. You don't need to waste budget fixing things in your experiment that don't need fixing. Tell us more about what your testing for, and we can probably help you more.

[TEng89]

mith and daniel - just as a little project I'm trying to view the results of a burn victim specifically in the torso area to see which organs are damaged most. Regarding budget I'd say 100-150$ max.

[canalon]

So what you want toe emulate are not the physiscal properties of the skin, and the other organs, but rather their resistance to heat, and their ability to transfer it to the next layer. I am definitely not sure that plastics will be of any relevance, I would rather work with some sort of aqueous gels (because that is what we are made of), but don't ask me anything more specific.

[daniel.kurz]

I would say some kind of silicon gel would work best. You can probably find it from a prosthetics company perhaps. Silicon emulates the structural polymer of skin best.

[mith]

Find some used breast implants

</juvenile humor>

You could probably use animals bones to replicate human bones.