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Updated: Jul 13, 2025

Neutron Radiography and Computed Tomography of Biological Systems at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor
Published on: May 7, 2021
A Monte Carlo study on the impact of indirect action on neutron relative biological effectiveness
James Manalad1, Logan Montgomery2, John Kildea1
1Medical Physics Unit, McGill University, Montreal, QC H4A 3J1, Canada.
Abstract:
Recent Monte Carlo studies have linked the energy-dependent risk of neutron-induced stochastic effects to the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of neutrons in inflicting difficult-to-repair clusters of lesions in nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). However, an investigation on the damaging effects of indirect radiation action is missing from such studies. In this work, we extended our group's existing simulation pipeline by incorporating and validating a model for indirect action. Our updated simulation pipeline was used to study the impact of indirect action and estimate neutron RBE for inflicting clustered lesions in DNA. In our results, although indirect action significantly increased the average yield of DNA damage clusters, our neutron RBE values are lower in magnitude than previous estimates due to model limitations and the greater relative impact of indirect action in lower-linear energy transfer (LET) radiation than in higher-LET radiation.
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