The influence of patient size on dose conversion coefficients

In this study, the influence of patient size on organ and effective dose conversion coefficients (DCCs) was investigated for a representative interventional fluoroscopic procedure—cardiac catheterization. The study was performed using hybrid phantoms representing an underweight, average and overweight American adult male. Reference body sizes were determined using the NHANES III database and parameterized based on standing height and total body mass. Organ and effective dose conversion coefficients were calculated for anterior–posterior, posterior–anterior, left anterior oblique and right anterior oblique projections using the Monte Carlo code MCNPX 2.5.0 with the metric dose area product being used as the normalization factor. Results show body size to have a clear influence on DCCs which increased noticeably when body size decreased. It was also shown that if patient size is neglected when choosing a DCC, the organ and effective dose will be underestimated to an underweight patient and will be overestimated to an underweight patient, with errors as large as 113% for certain projections. Results were further compared with those published for a KTMAN-2 Korean patient-specific tomographic phantom. The published DCCs aligned best with the hybrid phantom which most closely matched in overall body size. These results highlighted the need for and the advantages of phantom-patient matching, and it is recommended that hybrid phantoms be used to create a more diverse 5 Address for correspondence: Advanced Laboratory for Radiation Dosimetry Studies (ALRADS), Department of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-8300, USA. 0031-9155/09/123613+17$30.00 © 2009 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine Printed in the UK 3613 3614 P Johnson et al library of patient-dependent anthropomorphic phantoms for medical dose reconstruction.