A Comparison of Experimental and Calculated Survival Curves for V79 Cells Grown as Monolayers or in Suspension Exposed to Alpha Irradiation from 212Bi Distributed in the Growth Medium

Abstract

Abstract It has been shown that a survival curve can be constructed from the distribution of doses to the nuclei of cells exposed to high LET irradiation using a variable D0 (specific lethal dose). D0 is a function of cell type and LET and exp(-Di/D0) is the fraction of cells which survive a dose Di. The variation of D0 with LET can be found from the literature on track segment irradiation. Using the variation of D0 with LET, the survival of V79 cells irradiated with 212Bi alpha sources was calculated by finding the probability of surviving individual passages through the nuclei where the dose and LET for each passage is different. The D0 obtained experimentally for V79 cells exposed to growth medium containing 212Bi is 141 kBq.ml-1 for suspended cells and 259 kBq.ml-1 for cell monolayers. Monte Carlo calculations give a D0 of 159 kBq.ml-1 for suspended cells and 266 kBq.ml-1 for cell monolayers.