Development of neonate phantom for estimating medical exposure

The distribution and volume ratio of radiation sensitive organs such as red bone marrow are different between neonates and adults. In addition, the body sizes of neonates in NICU are smaller than normal neonates. Consequently, it is important to estimate a neonatal dose for X-ray examinations in NICU. However, there are few reports on quantitative estimates of measured or mathematically calculated doses for neonatal X-ray examinations. In order to estimate their dose, we made a physical neonatal phantom and estimated its dose using both measurement and calculation methods. In determining the phantom geometry, the body sizes were measured for neonates of NICU in Oita prefectural hospital. As body parameters, weights, heights and trunk sizes were obtained. The weight of phantom was determined to be 2000 g based on these data. The height of the phantom is 43.5 cm, and the trunk width is determined to be 9.5 cm. The whole shape was expressed with rectangular solids without bone region to avoid the difficulties on phantom construction and calculations. The height and other body size parameters were calculated as a function of body weight, which were determined as regression lines on these data. The weights of lungs were calculated using NIRS-M-115, and the positions were determined according to anatomical geometry. The components of the phantom were soft tissue and lung, and tough water and tough lung phantoms were selected as materials of the phantom. For the purpose of the dose measurement, the phantom was located in the incubator of NICU, and exposed under 4 kinds of the conditions of ordinary X-ray examination, which were for chest, combined abdomen-chest, abdomen and head radiographs using a portable X-ray machine. A film-badge was put on the center of exposed area for each examination, and measured entrance surface dose of the phantom. The glass dosimeters were also used. The measured doses of chest, combined abdomen-chest and abdomen were 0.1-0.12 mSv. The Monte-Carlo simulation was done by using EGS4 code. The phantom geometry was divided into voxels in order to estimate the site of energy deposition in the phantom. The dose distribution was calculated with g77 on a Linux/Alpha machine. (author)