A femur phantom made of wax and a real human bone was used to study the dose during radiographical procedures. The depth dose inside the phantom was determined using DOSXYZnrc, a Monte Carlo simulation software. The results were verified with measurements using TLD-100H. It was found that for 2.5 mm aluminium filtered 84-kVp X-rays, the radiation dose in the bone reached 57 % higher than the surface dose, i.e. 3.23 mGy as opposed to 2.06 mGy at the surface. The use of real bone introduces variations in the bone density in the DOSXYZnrc model, resulting in a lower attenuation effect than expected from solid bone tissues.
BEAMnrc was used to derive the X-ray spectra, from which HVL and homogeneity coefficient were determined, for different kVp and filtration settings. Except for the peak at 61 keV, the spectra are in good agreement with the IPEM report 78 data for the case of filtered beams, whereas the unfiltered beams exhibit softer spectra. Although the current attenuation data deviates from the IPEM 78 data by ~±0.5%, this has negligible effects on the calculated HVL values.