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The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for fabricating tumor vessel phantom and then investigate the thermal dosage profile caused by high‐intensity‐focused ultrasound (HIFU) surgery.

In this paper, a thermal sensitive powder has been added to silicon‐based gel as a vessel phantom raw material for displaying the thermal dosage profile caused by HIFU. A fused deposition modeling system was used for fabricating the shell casting mold and the vessel arbor mold. The arbor prototype, made of wax, was solidified in the cavity of vessel arbor mold. The vessel phantom object embedded with the arbor prototype was created in the shell mold casting process. The vessel phantom was obtained by immersing the vessel phantom object into hot water (65°C) for melting the vessel arbor prototype. A HIFU experiment has been conducted for verifying the feasibility of displaying the thermal dosage profile of the fabricated vessel phantom. The HIFU experimental parameters including the driving power of HIFU transducer, ultrasound exposure duration and volume flow rate were used for investigating the thermal dosage variation by the perfusion of vessel phantom.

The properties of fabricated mimicking phantom agree well with those of human tissue. The experimental results show that the proposed method can fabricate the Y‐type vessel phantom. The proposed method has been proved as a promising fabrication process in fabricating the vessel phantom and it displays the thermal dosage profile in HIFU experiment.

The proposed method and the developed experimental apparatus are helpful for pre‐clinical HIFU surgery.

The purpose of this study is to describe the design and validation of a three-dimensional (3D)-printed phantom of a uterus to support the development of uterine balloon tamponade devices conceived to stop post-partum haemorrhages (PPHs).

The phantom 3D model is generated by analysing the main requirements for validating uterine balloon tamponade devices. A modular approach is implemented to guarantee that the phantom allows testing these devices under multiple working conditions. Once finalised the design, the phantom effectiveness is validated experimentally.

The modular phantom allows performing the required measurements for testing the performance of devices designed to stop PPH.

PPH is the leading obstetric cause of maternal death worldwide, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. The proposed phantom could speed up and optimise the design and validation of devices for PPH treatment, reducing the maternal mortality ratio.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the 3D-printed phantom represents the first example of a modular, flexible and transparent uterus model. It can be used to validate and perform usability tests of medical devices.

To discuss the concept of phantom reality.

When one begins to look at the phenomenon of phantoms, one comes across different sections, which are referred to in expressions such as phantom limb pain, phantom circuits or phantom pregnancy. When are these phantoms? What are they all about? In which contexts are these expressions used? Do they have similarities or aspects in common? How can we deal with them and which reality do they belong to?

Even if we consider these questions as undecidable ones in the sense of Heinz von Foerster, more differentiated answers can be given on the basis of Nelson Goodman's and Catherine Z. Elgin's concept of variations.

The paper offers ideas for dialogue and orientation in the area of conflict of phantom and reality.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the properties of simplified physical and corresponding numerical human body models (phantoms) and verify their applicability to path loss modeling in narrowband and ultra-wideband on-body wireless body area networks (WBANs). One of the models has been proposed by the authors.

Two simplified numerical and two physical phantoms for body area network on-body channel computer simulation and field measurement results are presented and compared.

Computer simulations and measurements which were carried out for the proposed simplified six-cylinder model with various antenna locations lead to the general conclusion that the proposed phantom can be successfully used for experimental investigation and testing of on-body WBANs both in ISM and UWB IEEE 802.15.6 frequency bands.

Usage of the proposed phantoms for the simulation/measurement of the specific absorption rate and for off-body channels are not within the scope of this paper.

The proposed simplified phantom can be easily made with a low cost in other laboratories and be used both for research and development of WBAN technologies. The model is most suitable for wearable antenna radiation pattern simulation and measurement.

Presented results facilitate applications of WBANs in medicine and health monitoring.

A new six-cylinder phantom has been proposed. The proposed simplified phantom can be easily made with a low cost in other laboratories and be used both for research and development of WBAN technologies.

The purpose of this study is to use the Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) additive manufacturing (AM) technique for manufacturing a liver phantom which can mimic the corresponding soft living tissue. One of the possible applications is surgical planning.

A thermo-reversible Pluronic® F-127-based support bath is used for the FRESH technique. To verify how three-dimensional (3D)-printed new materials can mimic liver tissue, dynamic mechanical analysis and oscillation shear rheometry tests are carried out to identify mechanical characteristics of different 3D printed silicone samples. Additionally, the differential scanning calorimetry was done on the silicone samples. Then, a validation of a 3D printed silicone liver phantom is performed with a 3D scanner. Finally, the surface topography of the 3D printed liver phantom was fulfiled and microscopy analysis of its surface.

Silicone samples were able to mimic the liver, therefore obtaining the first soft phantom of the liver using the FRESH technique.

Because of the use of soft silicones, surgeons could practice over these improved phantoms which have an unprecedented degree of living tissue mimicking, enhancing their rehearsal experience before surgery.

An improvement in surgeons surgery skills would lead to a bettering in the patient outcome.

The first research study was carried out to mimic soft tissue and apply it to the 3D printing of organ phantoms using AM FRESH technique.

We view novelists as people who work alone through the night typing away at their keyboards while deeply absorbed in thought. Although no novel could be published without the performance of the solitary role of the writer, the publication of a novel involves far more than merely the performance of this one role. Book agents must screen writers’ novels for possible representation by their agency, acquisition editors must screen them for possible publication by their publishing houses, and production editors must prepare them for distribution; therefore, the publication of a novel is a genuine “social act.” Nevertheless, a novel's publication is a distinctively creative social act because it affords greater opportunity than most social acts for people to express their “selves” or, more precisely, “phantom communities,” which are etched from their past “significant social actions.” A novelist's phantom community primarily discloses itself through the “voice” in which she tells her story. Thus, the “voice” that an author uses while writing her novel can provide telltale signs of not only her phantom community, but also of the past significant social actions in which she has and has not participated during the course of her life.

The assessing of the specific absorption rate (SAR) of living organisms or phantoms is difficult to realize and this paper seeks to do this. SAR much more precisely describes the energy absorbed by biological objects than values of electric field strength (E [V/m]) or power density (S [W/m²]) measured at the point of exposition. However, for living objects the assessing of SAR is not an easy task by measuring methods or even in calculation evaluations. Numerical techniques, especially the finite‐difference time‐domain method (FDTD), offer different possibilities of calculations. The important problem with FDTD method introduced to lossy objects with complex shapes is that this method is not verified with the measuring data.

In this work the results of calculations and measuring data of ellipsoidal phantoms filled with specimen of electrical parameters like muscle tissue are presented. The calculations of SAR have been realized for two cases, e.g. for plane wave incident and for waveguide condition. Measurements for verifying the obtained data were done by waveguide method. The comparison of numerical (the package CONCERTO (Vector Fields Ltd)) and measurement methods were done at frequencies 900 and 1,800 MHz.

Calculations of SAR of lossy objects by FDTD method have been confirmed by measurements and analytical method of calculations. This documents that the package CONCERTO (Vector Fields Ltd) (Concerto User Guide) can be used for such calculations.

This paper presents the results of calculations of SAR of ellipsoidal phantoms filled with specimens of electrical parameters of equivalent muscle tissue.

Google Scholar (GS) has shed the beta label on the fifth anniversary of launching its service. This paper aims to address this issue.

As good as GS is – through its keyword search option – to find information about tens of millions of documents, many of them in open access full text format, it is as bad for metadata‐based searching when, beyond keywords in the title, abstract, descriptor and/or full text, the searcher also has to use author name, journal title and/or publication year in specifying the query. This paper provides a review of recent developments in Google Scholar.

GS is especially inappropriate for bibliometric searches, for evaluating the publishing performance and impact of researchers and journals.

Even if the clean up of Google Scholar accelerates it should not be forgotten that those evaluations of individuals and journals that have been done based on Google Scholar in the past few years have grossly handicapped many authors and journals whose name was replaced by phantom entries.

The paper outlines a new approach for positioning a patient on the treatment table for radiation therapy sessions. The vision approach utilizes lasers and cameras for positioning and has several advantages over the conventional methods.

The positioning is accomplished by comparison of a set of computed tomography (CT) contours (acquired from the patient) with a set of corresponding contours acquired by a 3D vision system from the same region of the patient's body. The overall positioning error calculated by the iterative closest point algorithm is used to reorient the treatment table. Various issues related to the acquisition and generation of the 3D spatial data are discussed.

Positioning is accurate and can detect small movement in the patient's position.

Testing was done on a cast of a human torso and additional testing is required on in a hospital environment to fully test the efficiency of the approach.

The method merges data readily available from standard CT imaging systems and 3D imaging systems. Therefore, the additional hardware requirements are minimal. The system integrates well with existing hardware, software and treatment practices.

The method introduces a new approach to patient positioning employing a combination of sensor technologies. The approach is accurate, reliable, consumes less time and most importantly prevents the use of X‐rays for patient positioning.