Ricerc@Sapienza

Ion beam therapy is a rapidly growing technique for tumor radiation therapy. Ions allow for a high dose deposition in the tumor region, while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. For this reason, the highest possible accuracy in the calculation of dose and its spatial distribution is required in treatment planning. On one hand, commonly used treatment planning software solutions adopt a simplified beam–body interaction model by remapping pre-calculated dose distributions into a 3D water-equivalent representation of the patient morphology.

Hyperthermia is a therapeutic technique used to enhance the efficacy of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the treatment of oncological pathologies, by way of a temperature increase of 41–43°C in the target region. To validate hyperthermia devices, as well as the numerical codes used to simulate hyperthermia treatments, simple phantoms are used. This article considers the influence of phantoms’ geometry, dimensions, and considered organs, on the electromagnetic power absorption.

Tissue-equivalent dielectric simulators (also named phantoms) are increasingly used to test electromagnetic systems used close to the human body for compliance or research and development purposes. In compliance applications, phantoms are used to verify electromagnetic field absorption in human tissues with reference to safety guidelines. In research and development applications, phantoms are used for verification and optimization of electromagnetic systems performances during the design phase or to validate, e.g., antenna's performances against specifications in reference conditions.