Evaluation of effective dose conversion coefficients for Korean adults during medical x-ray examinations up to 150 keV through comparison with ICRP Publication 74 and ICRP Publication 116

Abstract

A Monte Carlo program for calculating organ doses for patients undergoing medical x-ray examination (PCXMC) was used to calculate effective dose conversion coefficients for Korean adults. Two sets of effective dose results were calculated based on tissue weighting factors recommended in International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Publications 60 and 103 for monochromatic energy photons of 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 and 150 keV. The results were obtained for monoenergetic photons, since effective dose conversion coefficients recommended in ICRP Publications 74 and 116 were given for monochromatic energies, thereby enabling the comparison of our result to those suggested by the ICRP publications. The areas of comparison include: to observe effects due to changes in tissue weighting factors, modification within Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) phantoms and differences in phantom types. The phantom employed in the PCXMC program is a modified version of the phantom used in ICRP Publication 74, with additional organs that were added in order to take into account the updated tissue weighting factors given in ICRP Publication 103. Both use MIRD phantoms but our study modified the phantom size to the average physical condition of Korean adults, while ICRP Publication 74 uses the phantom size of the reference man defined in ICRP Publication 23. On the other hand, the effective dose suggested in ICRP 116 was calculated using an entirely different type of phantom: a voxel phantom with the size of reference man. Although significant differences were observed for certain organ doses in the lateral beam directions, differences in the effective doses were within 5% for the anterior–posterior (AP) and posterior–anterior (PA) directions, and within 16% in lateral directions when tissue weighting factors were applied and the variations were adjusted for all three comparisons. The results show that calculation of effective doses for Korean adults using the PCXMC (Caucasian-based phantom) is acceptable for the AP and PA directions, but care should be taken for lateral directions.