Design and manufacture procedures of phantoms for hyperthermia QA guidelines

Clinical outcome of hyperthermia therapy (HT) is strongly correlated with the thermal dose delivered into the tumor. Achieving of prescribed temperature distribution within the target area should therefore the primary objective of any HT treatment. The Quality Assurance (QA) guidelines developed in past decennium by ESHO-TC establish the physical characterization and prescribe the safeguards to ensure that the clinically used equipment is capable of achieving adequate temperatures. The direct implementation of these guidelines is however limited by the lack of suitable phantom materials. To address this issue, we propose (i) a novel material to mimic fat tissue and (ii) a standardized phantom verification of phased array applicators for deep HT in Head and Neck (H&N) and extremities. In particular, (i) a fat-phantom composed of an ethylcellulose based oleogel exhibit equivalent dielectric and thermal properties with the required mechanical stability even at elevated temperatures, while (ii) the standardized phantom provides the means to capture the thermal profiles to evaluate the performance indicators in reproducible manner. Both phantoms thus bears a great potential for their extensive use in QA procedures.