Multimodal photoacoustic and ultrasound (PAUS) imaging is emerging as an attractive technique to map structural, functional, and molecular information in living subjects, at both pre-clinical and clinical level. There is a need to routinely calibrate these PAUS imaging instruments using durable phantoms that have tunable optical and acoustic scattering properties and allow for easy incorporation of imaging targets. This work studies the potential of agar, polyacrylamide (PAA) and polyvinyl chloride plastisol (PVCP) based phantoms for their durability, ease of preparation, and efficacy in producing verifiable multimodal imaging (shear wave elastography, doppler, B-mode ultrasound, and photoacoustic) results in various studies. Agar is simplest and most cost effective in preparation compared to PAA and proved to be easiest to incorporate targets for all imaging modes but is prone to bacterial growth and degradation when imaged routinely. PAA phantoms remain intact and without bacterial growth during a longer period than agar and are easily developed with tunable properties and inclusions. PVCP Phantoms are complex in preparation but have shown the most promise in durability for storage and routine use. Additional analysis of the tunability of the optical and acoustic properties PVCP phantoms will further complete the evaluation in comparison to agar and PAA.
