RBE vs. dose for low doses of high-let radiations

Abstract

According to track theory, the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of high linear energy transfer (LET) radiations varies with cellular radiosensitivity parameters and the radiation environment. Of special interest is that the RBE varies as the dose of high-LET radiation to the power (1/m - 1) where m is the "target number" parameter, which varies from 2-4 in different cell lines. This applies to neutrons as well as to heavy ions at sufficiently low doses such that cells are not activated in the gamma-kill mode; that is, the tracks of single heavy ions are sufficiently far apart so that there are few cases of inter-track inactivation.