Abstract
The average absorbed dose in glandular tissue is the most appropriate parameter for the assessment of the radiation-induced risk during breast imaging. The aims of this work concern: (1) the investigation of the variation effect of any related update to photon cross-section data-bases on the computation of the normalized glandular dose (DgN) for mammography quality control tests and (2) the proposition of a parameterization method leading to provide DgN values function of the breast thickness (7) and the particle energy (E) instead of E alone, as normally known. We analyzed the change effect of the photon cross-section data-bases on the computation of DgN. Those coefficients, generated using the Geant4 Monte Carlo toolkit, were studied over a range of compressed breast thickness of 2-8 cm for monoenergetic (1-120 keV by 1 keV intervals) and polyenergetic (23-35 kVp by 2 kVp intervals) X-ray beams. Moreover, breast tissue composition ranging from about 0% glandular (about 100% adipose) to 100% glandular (0% adipose) was also covered. The successful parameterization of DgN look-up table function of the breast thickness and energy, will compact its analytical form without loss of accuracy. All parameterization fits resulted in r(2) values of 0.999 or better.