FIG. 1.

Structure of the liquid crystal phantom. (a) Chemical structure of the detergent sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate (trade name AOT used in the text), the hydrocarbon isooctane, and water. (b) Self-assembled nanostructure with AOT (white sodium ions, red hydrophilic headgroups, yellow hydrophobic tails) in the interface between a continuous matrix of isooctane (green) and hexagonally packed cylindrical rods of water (blue). The structure was generated with the molecular dynamics simulation package GROMACS (122) and rendered with POV-Ray (123). (c) Schematic microstructure with randomly oriented 100 μm-scale anisotropic domains color-coded according to the direction of the six-fold symmetry axis as [x,y,z] = [red, green, blue]. (d) Photo of the phantom comprising the transparent liquid crystal in a 0.5 L round-bottom glass flask on a cork stand in front of the wall logo at the reception of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (97).