[Gender-specific calculation of the effective dose with an example of thoracic CT tomography]

Systematic gender-specific differences in anatomy and physiology are mostly neglected in standard methodologies for the determination of effective doses. This paper presents and discusses three different concepts for the derivation of gender-specific effective doses. Based on the most convincing approach--especially through the influence of tissue weighting factors for the breast--the effective dose for a serial CT scan of the chest is higher for women (+11%) and lower (-11%) for men in comparison to the "gender-neutral" average value. These differences amount to +/- 30% for coronary serial CT applications.