A review of dental cone-beam CT dose conversion coefficients.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to review the literature to examine the usage and magnitude of effective dose conversion factors (DCE) for dental cone beam CT (CBCT) scanners. A PubMed literature search for publications relating to radiation dosimetry in dental radiography was performed. Papers were included if they reported DCE, or reported ICRP 103 effective dose and dose-area product. 71 papers relating to dental CBCT dosimetry were found, of which eight reported effective dose conversion factors or provided enough information to calculate dose conversion factors. Scanner model, effective dose, dose-area product, tube voltage, field of view size and DCE were extracted from the papers for analysis. DCE values ranged from 0.035 to 0.31 µSv/mGy-cm2 with a mean of 0.129 µSv/mGy-cm2 (SD = 0.056). When categorized into small (<100 cm2), medium (100-225 cm2) and large (>225 cm2) fields of view (FOV), linear fits to the effective dose and dose-area product yielded slopes of 0.129, 0.111 and 0.074 µSv/mGy-cm2 for small, medium and large FOVs respectively. The range of reported DCE values and spread with respect to field of view category suggests that DCE values that depend on FOV would provide more accurate effective dose estimates. Tube voltage was found to be a smaller factor in determining DCE. Reasonable values for DCE taking into account FOV size were obtained. There is considerable room for more work to be done to examine the behaviour of DCE with changes to patient age and dental CBCT imaging parameters.