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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Irradiator Commissioning and Dosimetry for Assessment of LQ α and β Parameters, Radiation Dosing Schema, and in vivo Dose Deposition
Published on: March 11, 2021
A simple dose-response relationship for modeling secondary cancer incidence after radiotherapy
Uwe Schneider1, Barbara Kaser-Hotz
1Division of Medical Physics, Department of Radiation Oncology and Nuclear Medicine, City Hospital Triemli, Zürich, Switzerland. uwe.schneider@psi.ch
Abstract:
Estimates of secondary cancer risk after radiotherapy are becoming more important for comparative treatment planning. There is great uncertainty concerning the dose-response relationship for radiation-induced carcinogenesis at doses higher than 4 Gy. The purpose of this report is to determine a simple dose-response relationship for secondary cancer incidence after radiotherapy treatment which can be used for comparative treatment planning. In this report a simple one-parameter model to estimate the complication probability of secondary cancer was fitted to literature data on secondary cancer incidence after radiotherapy. The results showed a linear dose-response relationship in the low-dose part and an exponentially decreasing one after a maximum at around 10 Gy. The observed dose-response relationship and the literature data used to fit the dose-response indicate that cell death effects are important for the explanation of secondary cancer incidence. Even using a dose and dose-rate effectiveness factor (DDREF) of two (instead of one), a cancer incidence maximum is observed at around 10 Gy, with decreasing incidence at higher doses.
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