Photon dose conversion coefficients for the human teeth in standard irradiation geometries

Photon dose conversion coefficients for the human tooth materials are computed in energy range from 0.01 to 10 MeV by the Monte Carlo method. The voxel phantom Golem of the human body with newly defined tooth region and a modified version of the EGS4 code have been used to compute the coefficients for 30 tooth cells with different locations and materials. The dose responses are calculated for cells representing buccal and lingual enamel layers. The computed coefficients demonstrate a strong dependence on energy and geometry of the radiation source and a weaker dependence on location of the enamel voxels. For isotropic and rotational radiation fields the enamel dose does not show a significant dependence on tooth sample locations. The computed coefficients are used to convert from absorbed dose in teeth to organ dose or to integral air kerma. Examples of integral conversion factors from enamel dose to air kerma are given for several photon fluences specific for the Mayak reprocessing plant in Russia. The integral conversion factors are strongly affected by the energy and angular distributions of photon fluence, which are important characteristics of an exposure scenario for reconstruction of individual occupational doses. (orig.)