Evaluation of the medical exposure doses regarding dental examinations with different X-ray instruments

Modern dental X-ray examination that consists of traditional form, panorama, and cone-beamed 3D technologies is one of the most frequent diagnostic applications nowadays. This study used the Rando Phantom and thermoluminescence dosimeters (TLD) to measure the absorbed doses of radiosensitive organs recommended by International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and whole body effective doses which were delivered due to dental X-ray examination performed with different types of X-ray instrument. Besides, enamel samples which performed reading with Electronic Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) procedure were also used to estimate the tooth doses. EPR is a dose reconstruction method of measuring free radicals induced by radiation exposure to the calcified tissue (mainly in the tooth enamel or bone) to evaluate the accepted high dose. The tooth doses estimated by TLD and EPR methods were compared. Relationships between the tooth doses and effective doses by dental X-ray examinations with different types of X-ray equipment were investigated in this work. - Highlights: • We investigated effective dose due to the dental X-ray examinations. • Relationships between the tooth doses and effective doses were assessed. • Dose corrections of energy dependent for TLD and enamel were necessary. • Correction factor of 8.08 for enamel was estimated for a dental cone beam CT. • Correction factor of 1.33 for TLD was estimated for a dental cone beam CT.