Objectives: Dental radiography may involve situations where the patient is known to be pregnant or the pregnancy is noticed after the X-ray procedure. In such cases, the radiation dose to the foetus, though low, needs to be estimated. Uniform and widely used guidance on dental X-ray procedures during pregnancy are presently lacking, the usefulness of lead shields is unclear and practices vary. Methods: Upper estimates of radiation doses to the foetus and breasts of the pregnant patient were estimated with an anthropomorphic female phantom in intraoral, panoramic, cephalometric and CBCT dental modalities with and without lead shields. Results: The upper estimates of foetal doses varied from 0.009 to 6.9 mGy, and doses at the breast level varied from 0.602 to 75.4 mGy. With lead shields, the foetal doses varied from 0.005 to 2.1 mGy, and breast doses varied from 0.002 to 10.4 mGy. Conclusions: The foetal dose levels without lead shielding were ,1% of the annual dose limit of 1 mSv for a member of the public. Albeit the relative shielding effect, the exposure-induced increase in the risk of breast cancer death for the pregnant patient (based on the breast dose only) and the exposure-induced increase in the risk of childhood cancer death for the unborn child are minimal, and therefore, need for foetal and breast lead shielding was considered irrelevant. Most important is that pregnancy is never a reason to avoid or to postpone a clinically justified dental radiographic examination.

In mammography dosimetry, phantoms are often used to represent breast tissue. The conformance of phantom- and patient-based mean glandular dose (MGD) estimates was evaluated mainly from the aspect of diagnostic reference levels. Patient and phantom exposure data were collected for eight diagnostic and three screening mammography devices. More extensive assessments were performed for two devices. The average breast thickness was close to the nationally used reference of 50 mm in diagnostic (50 mm, SD = 13 mm, n = 5342) and screening (47 mm, SD = 13 mm, n = 395) examinations. The average MGD for all breasts differed by 2% from the MGD determined for breasts in the limited compressed thickness range of 40-60 mm. The difference between phantom- and patient-based MGD estimations was up to 30%. Therefore, phantom measurements cannot replace patient dose data in MGD determination.