Voxel model of individual cells and its implementa

Authors: Lembit Sihver Jie Ni Liang Sun Dong Kong Yuanyuan Ren Siyi Gu

Publish Date: 2014/05/31

Volume: 53, Issue: 3, Pages: 571-579

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Abstract

Accurate dosimetric calculations at cellular and subcellular levels are crucial to obtain an increased understanding of the interactions of ionizing radiation with a cell and its nucleus and cytoplasm Ion microbeams provide a superior opportunity to irradiate small biological samples eg DNA cells and to compare their response to computer simulations However the phantoms used to simulate small biological samples at cellular levels are often simplified as simple volumes filled with water As a first step to improve the situation in comparing measurements of cell response to ionizing radiation with model calculations a realistic voxel model of a KB cell was constructed and used together with an already constructed geometry and tracking 4 GEANT4 model of the horizontal microbeam line of the Centre d’Etudes Nucléaires de BordeauxGradignan CENBG 35 MV Van de Graaf accelerator at the CENBG France The microbeam model was then implemented into GEANT4 for simulations of the average number of particles hitting an irradiated cell when a specified number of particles are produced in the beam line The result shows that when irradiating the developed voxel model of a KB cell with 200 α particles with a nominal energy of 3 MeV in the beam line and 234 MeV at the cell entrance 100 particles hit the cell on average The mean specific energy is 0209 ± 0019 Gy in the nucleus and 0044 ± 0001 Gy in the cytoplasm These results are in agreement with previously published data which indicates that this model could act as a reference model for dosimetric calculations of radiobiological experiments and that the proposed method could be applied to build a cell model databaseWe appreciate the help of Dr B Li during the biological experiments We also acknowledge the support of Dr S Incerti for helping us with the GEANT4 calculations This work was funded by PAPD A Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions

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