Abstract
Electron beam therapy (EBT) is commonly used for treating superficial and subdermal tumors. Previous cellular radiosensitivity research using EBT may be underestimating the contribution from flask wall scattering and the corresponding dose distribution. Single cell suspensions of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells were plated on flasks and irradiated with 3, 4, 7, 9, and 18 MeV energy electron beams from two different institutions, and the spatial locations of surviving colonies were recorded. Gafchromic film dosimetry and Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to determine the spatial electron scattering contribution from the flask walls. Low electron irradiation resulted in an uneven surviving colony distribution concentrated near the periphery of the flasks, while spatial colony formation was statistically uniform at energies above 7 MeV. Our data demonstrates that without proper dosimetric corrections, studies using low energy electrons can lead to misinterpretations of energy dependent cellular radiosensitivity in culture vessels, and radiotherapeutic applications.
Highlights
Electron beam therapy (EBT) is an effective radiotherapy for treating superficial and subdermal tumors such as skin lesions, melanomas, lymphomas, and a variety of other skin-deep malignancies
We hypothesized, that electrons delivered at different energies have different scattering characteristics that interact with the flask wall and can deliver uneven dose distribution to the flask as a whole
We investigated uneven survivors in the cell culture vessels, uneven dose distribution from DNA damage, corresponding film dosimetry, and the comparative scattering distributions from Monte Carlo simulations
Summary
Electron beam therapy (EBT) is an effective radiotherapy for treating superficial and subdermal tumors such as skin lesions, melanomas, lymphomas, and a variety of other skin-deep malignancies. In order to investigate the comparative biological effects of electron irradiation, early studies were carried out via beta-emitting radioisotopes. These studies found electron beam radiation has qualities similar to low linear energy transfer (LET) photon radiation. Film has high spatial resolution and provides a permanent recording of the integrated dose distribution It is widely used in dosimetric comparisons to calculated dose for external beam radiation quality assurance[10]. Cell culture vessels have been analyzed previously using film and analytical electron transport techniques for clinical megavoltage and kilovoltage photon beams[14]. We investigated uneven survivors in the cell culture vessels, uneven dose distribution from DNA damage, corresponding film dosimetry, and the comparative scattering distributions from Monte Carlo simulations
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