ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the effect of different coating methods on production quality of complex and flexible silicone vascular replicas. Methods Based on models of anterior communicating artery aneurysms, several patient-specific models were made by using spray-coating method and brush-spin-coating method respectively, and two methods for making the same vascular structure were quantitatively compared in terms of thickness growth, circumferential uniformity and light transmittance. Results Brush-spin-coating method was better than spray-coating method in the thickness control and coating uniformity for fabrication of vessels with large curvature, variable diameter and straight tube, and the model had preferably light transmittance and surface smoothness. The relative deviation of thickness by brush-spin-coating method was decreased by 8. 9% , 10. 8% and 16. 9% respectively compared with spray-coating method. Conclusions At present stage, the brush-spin coating method has the advantage of thickness uniformity and light transmittance over the spray-coating method in making silicone phantoms, and it has promising application prospects in fluid mechanics field of in vitro experiment on large vessels.