Development of Lightweight Solid Phantom Composed of Silicone Rubber and Carbon Nanotubes

A lightweight human phantom material that has a specific gravity below 1.0 is newly developed and a full sized realistic shaped human phantom model is constructed using this material. Fundamental material composites are carbon nanotubes and silicone rubber. The carbon nanotubes enable this material to simulate various biological tissues with less specific gravity values than those of original ones. In addition, using the silicone rubber allows us to construct phantom models of various shapes. This paper describes the design principle and estimates the relation between complex permittivity and composition ratio of the material experimentally. Finally, a full sized realistic shaped human phantom model is constructed to show the features of the proposed material.