Depth dose of critical organs of phantom based on surface dose exposed with Dual X-ray absorptiometry: pencil beam using TLD dosimetry

Introduction: Dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is one of the most widely used techniques fornon-invasive assessment of bone status. Radiation dosimetry is well established technique for pencilbeam and fan beam DXA system, for the assessment of the surface absorbed dose. No publishedassessment of the absorbed dose for the various depths of the critical organs such as the thyroid anduterus was found. Therefore, in this study, we measured the surface dose and depth dose of criticalorgans to determine the correlation between the depth dose and the surface dose.Materials and Methods: A Lunar DPX-MD (pencil beam) system was used in this study. Ananthropomorphic phantom was designed. AP spine and femur scan modes were used to measure thesurface and depth doses of the thyroid left and right lobes and uterus in various deeps and scan centers.TLDs-400 were placed at the surface, near the source and also inserted at different depths in thyroidand uterus of the anthropomorphic phantom. Absorbed doses were measured on the phantom for APspine and femur scans. The correlation between the absorbed dose and the depth was found using thelinear regression analysis.Results: There was no significant correlation between the depth dose and the scan center doseexcept in the femur scan. AP spine effective dose were calculated as 0.064, 0.059, 0.061 and 0.242μSv for thyroid left, right lobes, uterus and ovary, respectively.Conclusion: It is concluded that there is significant correlation between the surface and the doseof various depths of the scanned sections.