The dose-related plateau effect of surviving fraction in normal tissue during the ultra-high-dose-rate radiotherapy

Abstract

Objective. Ultra-high-dose-rate radiotherapy, referred to as FLASH therapy, has been demonstrated to reduce the damage of normal tissue as well as inhibiting tumor growth compared with conventional dose-rate radiotherapy. The transient hypoxia may be a vital explanation for sparing the normal tissue. The heterogeneity of oxygen distribution for different doses and dose rates in the different radiotherapy schemes are analyzed. With these results, the influence of doses and dose rates on cell survival are evaluated in this work. Approach. The two-dimensional reaction–diffusion equations are used to describe the heterogeneity of the oxygen distribution in capillaries and tissue. A modified linear quadratic model is employed to characterize the surviving fraction at different doses and dose rates. Main results. The reduction of the damage to the normal tissue can be observed if the doses exceeds a minimum dose threshold under the ultra-high-dose-rate radiation. Also, the surviving fraction exhibits the ‘plateau effect’ under the ultra-high dose rates radiation, which signifies that within a specific range of doses, the surviving fraction either exhibits minimal variation or increases with the dose. For a given dose, the surviving fraction increases with the dose rate until tending to a stable value, which means that the protection in normal tissue reaches saturation. Significance. The emergence of the ‘plateau effect’ allows delivering the higher doses while minimizing damage to normal tissue. It is necessary to develop appropriate program of doses and dose rates for different irradiated tissue to achieve more efficient protection.