Radiation shielding in dental radiography.

The protective effect in the thyroid region from different types of radiation shielding at intraoral radiography has been studied as well as the reduction of the absorbed dose to the sternal and the gonadal regions. The shielding tested were the different types of leaded aprons, of which three had an attached leaded collar and the other two were used in combination with separate soft leaded collars. Furthermore one of the soft leaded collars and an unflexible horizontal leaded shield were tested separately. Two dental x-ray machines of 60 and 65 kVp with rectangular and circular tube collimators were used. The exposure times corresponded to speed group E film. The absorbed doses were measured with two ionization chambers. No significant difference in the protective effect in the thyroid gland could be found between the different types of radiation shieldings. There was a dose reduction by approximately a factor of 2 to the thyroid region down to 0.08 mGy per full survey using parallelling technique, and below 0.001 mGy per single bitewing exposure. The shielding reduced the thyroid dose using bisecting-angle technique by a factor of 5 down to 0.15 mGy per full survey (20 exposures). In the sternal region the combinations of apron and collar reduced the absorbed dose from a full survey to below 2 microGy compared with 18 microGy (parallelling) and 31 microGy (bisecting-angle) without any shielding. With the horizontal leaded shield a reduction by a factor of 6 was obtained, but no significant sternal dose reduction could be detected from the soft collar alone. The gonadal dose could be reduced by a factor of 10 with the horizontal leaded shield, parallelling technique and circular collimator. Using leaded aprons the gonadal was approximately one per cent of the dose without any shielding, i.e. below 0.01 microGy per single intraoral exposure.