“A Comparative Critique of Two Scientific Articles in Radiotherapy and
Acoustic Gel Alternatives”
The advancement of medical imaging technologies has been a common theme in
several research studies. This essay provides a comparative critique of two such
studies: one explores the use of 3D printing in radiotherapy phantoms and the other
investigates the potential of using okra pod gel (OPG) as an alternative to
commercial acoustic gel for ultrasound imaging.
The first study presents a novel approach to the creation of radiotherapy phantoms
through 3D printing. While the introduction provides a clear context of the research
topic, it seems to lack certain points that would have been beneficial to the overview.
For instance, the introduction outlines the proposed solution which is the use of FDM
3D printing technique to fabricate a patient-specific phantom. However, it could have
been beneficial to provide a brief discussion of why FDM was chosen over other
existing 3D printing techniques. The specific model of printer, as well as source of
printing material was also not specific despite the variability of properties between
different brands. On the other hand, while the scope of the study is clearly defined the FDM technique is used to simulate soft tissue and lung, but not bone. Explaining
why the bone was not simulated in this study would have been helpful in supporting
the research hypothesis. The methodology section provided a detailed description of
the 3D printing materials, CT scanning, phantom design, and data analysis, but falls
short in providing information on the source and specifications of the 3D printers, the
criteria for selecting the CIRS phantom as the reference, the calibration of the CT
machine, and the statistical tests used for data analysis. Lastly, a more in-depth
discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen 3D printing
technique would have added value to the study.
The possibility of okra pod gel (OPG) as an affordable substitute for commercial
acoustic gel in ultrasound imaging is examined in the second paper. Numerous
attributes are compared in the study, such as spreadability, pH, viscosity,
organoleptic qualities, sonographic picture quality, and ease of use. The abstract
effectively summarizes the main discovery, which is that OPG can be used as a
reasonably priced alternative to commercial gel. Although the introduction does
outline the difficulties in obtaining commercial acoustic gel in low-resource settings,
the goal of the study is not stated explicitly. A more extensive description of the
human tissue-mimicking phantom process might be found in the materials and
methods section. The findings are presented in full in the results and discussion,
which highlight the best features of OPG and point to some of its possible uses in
low-resource settings.