Effective dose and risk assessment from film tomography used for dental implant diagnostics.

There are no data relating complex film tomography with effective dose that may be used to estimate the relative risk associated with dental implant diagnostics. The purpose of this study was to calculate the effective dose and estimate risk from the use of the Scanora multimodal imaging system. With the use of a tissue equivalent human phantom and thermoluminescent dosimetry, panoramic radiography was found to result in an effective dose of 26 microSv, while complex film tomography resulted in an effective dose of < 1 microSv to 30 microSv depending on the anatomical location of the imaging plane and the collimation option. An effective dose of this magnitude for panoramic radiography was estimated to represent a probability for stochastic effects on the order of 1.9 x 10(-6). Similarly, the effective dose associated with film tomography may be estimated to be equal to a probability for stochastic effects in the range of << 1 x 10(-6) to 2.2 x 10(-6).