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Comment on “Estimation of organ and effective dose due to Compton backscatter security scans” [Med. Phys. 39, 3396 (2012)]

Published

Author(s)

Lawrence T. Hudson, Jack L. Glover

Abstract

In the June Issue of Medical Physics, Hoppe and Schmidt presented estimates of the organ and effective dose from an x-ray backscatter scan using a Rapiscan Secure 1000 single pose system . The paper presents Monte Carlo modeling results and takes its estimates of the spectrum and air kerma from existing measurements in the literature (e.g. the air kerma is taken from a report by Johns Hopkins University APL ). Hence the results of that study depend critically upon the method of converting air kerma to dose (organ and effective). We conclude that the source fluence and therefore all doses were overestimated by a factor of about 3.5 due to a mistake in the air kerma normalization. The geometry of some simulations was also incorrect due to a misreading of the location of the air kerma measurement with respect to the source.
Citation
Medical Physics
Volume
39

Keywords

x-ray backscatter, air kerma, security screening, effective dose

Citation

Hudson, L. and Glover, J. (2012), Comment on “Estimation of organ and effective dose due to Compton backscatter security scans” [Med. Phys. 39, 3396 (2012)], Medical Physics (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created September 1, 2012, Updated February 19, 2017