Radiation Protection Dosimetry Advance Access published online on January 26, 2009
Radiation Protection Dosimetry, doi:10.1093/rpd/ncp003
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MONTE CARLO DOSIMETRY FOR TARGETED IRRADIATION OF INDIVIDUAL CELLS USING A MICROBEAM FACILITY
1 CNRS/IN2P3, Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan, UMR 5797, Gradignan F-33175, France
2 Université de Bordeaux, Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan, UMR 5797, Gradignan F-33175, France
* Corresponding author: incerti{at}cenbg.in2p3.fr
Received October 27, 2008, amended December 17, 2008, accepted December 27, 2008
Microbeam facilities provide a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of ionising radiation on living biological cells with a precise control of the delivered dose. This paper describes dosimetry calculations performed at the single-cell level in the microbeam irradiation facility available at the Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan in France, using the object-oriented Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit. The cell geometry model is based on high-resolution three-dimensional voxelised phantoms of a human keratinocyte (HaCaT) cell line. Such phantoms are built from confocal microscopy imaging and from ion beam chemical elemental analysis. Results are presented for single-cell irradiation with 3 MeV incident alpha particles.