A STUDY OF V79 CELL SURVIVAL AFTER PROTON AND CARBON ION BEAMS AS REPRESENTED BY THE PARAMETERS OF KATZ' TRACK STRUCTURE MODEL

Katz’s theory of cellular track structure (1) is an amorphous analytical model which applies a set of four cellular parameters representing survival of a given cell line after ion irradiation. Usually the values of these parameters are best fitted to a full set of experimentally measured survival curves available for a variety of ions. Once fitted, using these parameter values and the analytical formulae of the model calculations, cellular survival curves and RBE may be predicted for that cell line after irradiation by any ion, including mixed ion fields. While it is known that the Katz model parameters fitted to heavier ion data may yield unsatisfactory predictions of proton response, to our knowledge, no comprehensive data set which includes proton and heavier ion irradiations, measured in one laboratory, has been published. To study the consistency of evaluating parameters of this model from different sets of data obtained for the same cell line and different ions, measured at different laboratories, we have fitted model parameters to a set of carbon-irradiated V79 cells, published by Furusawa et al. (2), and to a set of proton-irradiated V79 cells, published by Wouters et al. (3), separately. We found that values of model parameters best fitted to the carbon data of Furusawa et al. yielded predictions of V79 survival after proton irradiation which did not match the V79 proton data of Wouters et al. Fitting parameters to both sets combined did not improve the accuracy of model predictions of the proton response.  This suggests that for increased accuracy of a therapy planning system based on Katz’s model, different sets of parameters may need to be used to represent cell survival after proton irradiation from those representing survival of this cell line after heavier ions, up to and including carbon irradiation.  

1. Katz, R., Track structure in radiobiology and in radiation detection. Nuclear Track Detection 2: 1-28 (1978).

2.  Furusawa Y. et al. Inactivation of aerobic and hypoxic cells from three different cell lines by accelerated 3He-, 12C- and 20Ne beams. Radiat Res. 2012 Jan; 177(1):129-31.

3. Wouters BG et al. Measurements of relative biological effectiveness of the 70 MeV proton beam at TRIUMF using Chinese hamster V79 cells and the high precision cell sorter assay. Radiat Res.1996 Aug. 146(2): 159-170.