A comparison of physical and dosimetric properties of lung substitute materials.

Purpose: The need for an accurate estimate of absorbed doses within and around irradiated thorax tissues necessitates the use of carefully selected materials from which phantoms are constructed. A lung substitute is more difficult to establish mostly due to its low physical density. Although many researchers have used cork as a lung substitute, very little research data address cork's characteristics to determine which type of cork is optimal as a substitute for lung tissue.