A multi-scale approach to the physics of ion beam cancer therapy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive multi-scale model for ion beam cancer therapy, linking macroscopic ion stopping to microscopic DNA damage, and provides calculations for DNA strand break probabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-scale framework that integrates different physical scales to better understand and predict DNA damage during ion beam therapy.

Findings

Calculated probabilities of DNA single and double strand breaks.

Demonstrated the multi-scale approach's potential for improving therapy planning.

Outlined methods for further refining DNA damage calculations.

Abstract

We propose a multi-scale approach to understanding physics related to the ion/proton-beam cancer therapy and calculation of the probability of the DNA damage as a result of irradiation of patients with energetic (up to 430 MeV/u) ions. This approach is inclusive with respect to different scales starting from the long scale defined by the ion stopping followed by a smaller scale defined by secondary electrons and radicals ending with the shortest scale defined by interactions of secondaries with the DNA. We present calculations of the probabilities of single and double strand breaks of the DNA and suggest a way of further elaboration of such calculations.