Monte Carlo calculated effective dose to teenage girls from computed tomography examinations

Effective doses from CT to paediatric patients are not common in the literature. This article reports some effective doses to teenage girls from CT examinations. The voxel computational model ADELAIDE, representative of a 14-year-old girl, was scaled in size by +/-5% to represent also 11-12-year-old and 16-year-old girls. The EGS4 Monte Carlo code was used to calculate the effective dose from chest, abdomen and whole torso CT examinations to the three versions of ADELAIDE using a 120 kV spectrum. For the whole torso CT examination, in order of increasing model size, the effective doses were 9.0, 8.2 and 7.8 mSv per 100 mA.s. Data are presented that allow the estimation of effective dose from CT examinations of the torso for girls between the ages of 11 and 16.