Dosimetric analysis of radiobiological experiments using a Geant4 based application

Experimental radiobiological studies dealing with the effects of ionizing radiation on the DNA in aqueous solutions often focus on the biological aspects while lacking a detailed description of the geometry, sample and the dosimetric methods used. The present calculations demonstrate that neglecting such factors can affect the reproducibility of the experiments and hinder comparability with other experiments. The simulations were performed using a Geant4 based application developed to examine the influence of parameters such as the microtube type, sample volume, particle type and energy on the dose distribution within the sample and on the mean dose in the whole sample. We demonstrate the use of the application for dose distribution calculations in samples with different volumes in the three most common microtubes for protons of energies 20, 30, and 100 MeV. (orig.)