When NASA's Artemis I mission launches later this year, its crew will include Helga and Zohar, two manikin models designed in collaboration with Duke University.

These models, called "phantoms," are made of materials that mimic human bones, soft tissue and organs, and they'll be fitted with sensors that will measure radiation exposure as they travel to the moon and back. Paul Segars and Ehsan Samei, both researchers at the Carl E. Ravin Advanced Imaging Laboratories at the Duke University School of Medicine, helped develop these phantoms using methods originally created to study how different medical procedures, tools and techniques precisely affect organs throughout the human body.

"Usually these 'phantoms' are virtual, and we use them to create avatars of patients. The goal of our work is that instead of conducting a clinical trial on human patients, you can use these avatars and run a simulated clinical trial through a computer," explains Samei, the Reed and Martha Rice Distinguished Professor of Radiology.