A hand phantom for radiological measurements

The paper presents the construction of a hand phantom and its usefulness for radiological measurements. Situations when the hand is exposed to ionizing radiation stimulated the invention of this phantom. An extremity dosimeter was placed on the middle finger of the phantom. All measured doses are relative. The doses were compared with the dose from the extremity dosimeter. The aim of this paper was not to show values of the measured doses in legal units but the authors wanted to show the difference between the dose received by the extremity dosimeter and the doses measured on the inside of the hand phantom. High-sensitive LiF:Mg,Cu,P thermoluminescence detectors were used for the measurements because of their small size and close tissue equivalence. The hand phantom makes it possible to acquire the dose distribution on the inside of the hand. The authors suggested the calculation of the coefficients: the average hand phantom coefficient CHPhAV and the maximum hand coefficient CHPhmax from phantom measurements. The extremity dosimeter dose estimates according to the recommended coefficients allowed to obtain more reliable values.