An appraisal of the value of the contaminated Poisson method to estimate the dose inhomogeneity in simulated partial-body exposure.

The situation in which inhomogeneous radiation exposure is likely to occur with accidental overexposure was simulated by studying chromosome aberrations in mixtures of male irradiated and female nonirradiated lymphocytes. The data were evaluated by means of the contaminated Poisson method. For X-ray doses from 1 to 10 Gy and ratios of irradiated to nonirradiated blood from 1:1 to 1:19, a good agreement was found between calculated and applied radiation doses and fractions exposed.