MONTE CARLO DOSE ASSESSMENT IN DENTAL CONE-BEAM COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY.

Most dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) uses an x-ray beam field covering the maxillomandibular region and the width-truncated detector geometry. The spatial dose distribution in dental CBCT is analyzed in terms of local primary and remote secondary doses by using a list-mode analysis of x-ray interactions obtained from the Monte Carlo simulations. The patient-dose benefit due to the width-truncated detector geometry is also investigated for a wide range of detector offsets. The developed dose estimation agrees with the measurement in a relative error of 7.7%. The secondary dose outside of the irradiation field becomes larger with increasing tube voltage. The dose benefit with the width-truncated geometry linearly increases as the detector-offset width is decreased. Leaving the CT image quality out of the account, the MC results reveal that the operation of dental CBCT with a lower tube voltage and a smaller detector-offset width is beneficial to the patient dose.