Process for making skin marker

Abstract

A skin marker is provided for diagnosis by X-ray tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. The skin marker is composed of a vessel in which a non-magnetic and X-ray radioopaque material is dispersed, and a hydrogel of high water content filled in the vessel. The hydrogel is prepared by a process comprising a casting step of casting into the vessel an aqueous solution containing more than 8 wt % and not more than 20 wt % of a polyvinyl alcohol having a degree of hydrolysis of not less than 98 mol % and an average polymerization degree of not less than 1,000, a freezing step of cooling the case aqueous solution to a temperature of not higher than - (minus)n 10.degree. C. to obtain a frozen mass, a thawing step of thawing the frozen mass, and one to seven additional cyclic processing steps each including the freezing and thawing steps.

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