Microdosimetric modeling of relative biological effectiveness for skin reactions; Possible linkage between in vitro and in vivo data

Sato, Tatsuhiko; Matsuya, Yusuke; Hamada, Nobuyuki*

International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, 114(1), p.153 - 162, 2022/09

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrobp.2022.05.010

The microdosimetric kinetic model, which was originally developed for estimating cell surviving fractions for various radiations, was improved to be capable of estimating the mean and uncertainty of RBE for skin reactions. The parameter used in the model was independently determined from in vitro measurements of dermal cell survival and in vivo measurements of skin reactions taken from 8 and 23 papers, respectively. Our model quantitatively revealed that RBE for skin reactions tend to be higher than that for dermal cell survival. RBE of various mono-energetic radiations calculated from this model confirmed that the past evaluations made by ICRP and NCRP a few decades ago are still supported by recent experimental data. Conclusions: Our model can play important roles not only in medical physics for avoiding unnecessary skin reactions in particle therapy and BNCT but also in radiation protection for future decision making of the recommended RBE values.