Influence of patient size on dose to female breast tissue during routine computed tomography scans

Abstract

Monte Carlo methods are well suited to the evaluation of radiation transport phenomena. The scalable phantoms employed in this project permitted rapid creation of three models of similar geometry, but different body habitus. It is difficult at this point to draw any conclusions about the relationship between patient size and radiation dose to breast tissue during CT scans of the chest. However, the results of DeMarco et al. suggest that we may find a more complicated relationship between breast size and breast dose than we anticipated. Whatever the relationship, it is important that physicians and radiologists realize how dose delivered by CT varies with breast size, so that an effective balance of risks and benefits may be obtained for all patients in diagnostic CT imaging.