Mean glandular dose to patients from stereotactic breast biopsy procedures

The aim of this work is to study the radiation doses delivered to a group of patients that underwent a stereotactic breast biopsy (SBB) procedure. Mean glandular doses (MGD) were estimated from the air-kerma measured at the breast surface entrance multiplying by specific conversion coefficients (DgN) that were estimated using Monte Carlo simulations. DgN were calculated for the 0° and  ±15° projections used in SBB and for the particular beam quality. Data on 61 patients were collected showing that a typical SBB procedure is composed by ten images. MGD was on average (4  ±  2) mGy with (0.38  ±  0.06) mGy per image. The use of specific conversion coefficients instead of typical DgN for mammography/tomosynthesis yields to obtain MGD values for SBB that are around a 65% lower on average.