Concepts of microdosimetry. III. Mean values of the microdosimetric distributions

This is the last part of an investigation of microdosimetric concepts relevant to numerical calculations. A formula is derived which permits the computation of the dose average lineal energy, yC, or the corresponding average of the specific energy without the need to determine the probability distributions, f(y) or f1(z). A detailed treatment is given for two cases of practical importance. The first case corresponds to spherical sites with diameters of the order of 1 mum and to neutrons up to 15 MeV. The second case corresponds to microscopic sites which are small enough that the change of the stopping power of charged particles traversing the site can be neglected.