Hyperthermia dough: a fat and bone equivalent phantom to test microwave/radiofrequency hyperthermia heating systems

The recipe described gives an easy to prepare, easy to handle and inexpensive fat phantom for the determination of absorbed-power distributions of microwave/radiofrequency radiation. If the phantom is used together with the high-water-content phantom (Guy 1971) the absorbed-power distributions can be determined in structured tissues. The phantom has been used in Utrecht to test the e-m boundary conditions at 434 MHz on interfaces between fat and muscle structures (Lagendijk and de Leeuw 1984) with experimental results in full agreement with theory. The low specific heat of the phantom is slightly compensated by the high density. However, to analyse absorbed-power distributions in structured phantoms from measured-temperature distributions, these values must be taken into account.