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Shielding the radiosensitive gonads during X-ray exposure has been advocated for plain film radiography for many years. In the UK, gonad shields are not widely employed in routine CT scanning, possibly owing to a perceived difficulty in protecting the gonads from a multidirectional X-ray source. The increasing numbers of CT scanners in the UK, with the large doses they deliver to patients, make potential dose reduction methods an important issue. This study measures the dose reduction achievable by shielding the male gonads with a lead wrap-around protection device. The reductions in dose when shielded both from direct radiation and from indirect radiation scattered from local tissues were studied. The use of the device resulted in a statistically significant reduction in the absorbed testicular dose from both direct and scattered radiation, with no increase in the dose measured in surrounding tissues. In three clinically relevant experimental protocols where the testes were not irradiated directly, the testicular absorbed dose from indirect scatter was reduced by 77-93% of the corresponding non-shielded figure. In these three experiments, image quality was unaltered by the use of the shield. A larger dose reduction was obtained when the shield was used to protect the testes from direct irradiation. However, this was achieved at the expense of considerable image degradation from streak artefact that would effectively prevent the clinical use of the device in this setting.

'QUADOS', a Concerted Action of the European Commission, has run an intercomparison aimed at evaluating the use of computational codes for dosimetry in radiation protection and medical physics. This intercomparison was open to all users of Monte Carlo, analytic and semi-analytic codes or deterministic methods. Its main aim was to provide a snapshot of the methods and codes currently in use. It also intended to furnish information on the methods used to assess the reliability of computational results and disseminate 'good practice' throughout the radiation dosimetry community. Eight problems were selected for their relevance to the radiation dosimetry community, three of which involve neutron transport. This paper focuses on the analysis of the neutron problems.

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Within the scope of CONRAD (A Coordinated Action for Radiation Dosimetry) Work Package 4 on Computational Dosimetry jointly collaborated with the other research actions on internal dosimetry, complex mixed radiation fields at workplaces and medical staff dosimetry. Besides these collaborative actions, WP4 promoted an international comparison on eight problems with their associated experimental data. A first set of three problems, the results of which are herewith summarised, dealt only with the expression of the stochastic uncertainties of the results: the analysis of the response function of a proton recoil telescope detector, the study of a Bonner sphere neutron spectrometer and the analysis of the neutron spectrum and dosimetric quantity H(p)(10) in a thermal neutron facility operated by IRSN Cadarache (the SIGMA facility). A second paper will summarise the results of the other five problems which dealt with the full uncertainty budget estimate. A third paper will present the results of a comparison on in vivo measurements of the (241)Am bone-seeker nuclide distributed in the knee. All the detailed papers will be presented in the WP4 Final Workshop Proceedings.