Combining BIANCA with FLUKA improves understanding of Biological Effects of Radiation
In March 2018 OMA Fellow Giulia Arico’ spent 2 days at the University of Pavia, Physics Department, to work together with Prof F Ballarini and Dr M Carante on some development of the FLUKA Monte Carlo code for biophysics applications. In particular, this project aims at offering the possibility of performing biological studies on the Relative Biological Effectiveness (RBE) and cell survival curves for hadrontherapy with FLUKA. FLUKA has been used at CNAO (Pavia, Italy), HIT (Heidelberg, Germany) and MIT (Marburg, Germany) for similar studies using the LEM model developed for heavy ions at GSI (Darmstadt, Germany). In the case of LEM, the dependency of the RBE on the particle energy is crucial, and the alpha and beta parameters, which vary for different tissues and tumours, are calculated for heavy ions using data from conventional photon radiotherapy. The alpha and beta terms determine the curvature of the cell survival curve.
The research group at the University of Pavia is developing an alternative approach for cell death studies, called BIophysical ANalysis of Cell death and chromosome Aberration (BIANCA). As the name suggests, in the BIANCA simulations the cell death is linked to the chromosome aberrations and experimental data are used for comparison. The results obtained with BIANCA can be used to complement and as comparison to the results obtained with the LEM model. Moreover, coupling of BIANCA with FLUKA could allow to predict cell survival curves and RBE for hadrontherapy.
This experience was useful and very satisfying for the fellow Giulia. She gained a deeper knowledge on radiation damage and biophysical models. Moreover, the initial results achieved are promising for a fruitful collaboration between BIANCA and FLUKA developers.