Estimating partial body ionizing radiation exposure by automated cytogenetic biodosimetry

Authors

Peter Rogan, The University of Western OntarioFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-4-2020

Journal

International Journal of Radiation Biology

Volume

96

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.01.278200

Abstract

Purpose: Inhomogeneous exposures to ionizing radiation can be detected and quantified with the Dicentric Chromosome Assay (DCA) of metaphase cells. Complete automation of interpretation of the DCA for whole body irradiation has significantly improved throughput without compromising accuracy, however low levels of residual false positive dicentric chromosomes (DCs) have confounded its application for partial body exposure determination.

Materials and Methods: We describe a method of estimating and correcting for false positive DCs in digitally processed images of metaphase cells. Nearly all DCs detected in unirradiated calibration samples are introduced by digital image processing. DC frequencies of irradiated calibration samples and those exposed to unknown radiation levels are corrected subtracting this false positive fraction from each. In partial body exposures, the fraction of cells exposed, and radiation dose can be quantified after applying this modification of the contaminated Poisson method.

Results: Dose estimates of three partially irradiated samples diverged 0.2 to 2.5 Gy from physical doses and irradiated cell fractions deviated by 2.3-15.8% from the known levels. Synthetic partial body samples comprised of unirradiated and 3 Gy samples from 4 laboratories were correctly discriminated as inhomogeneous by multiple criteria. Root mean squared errors of these dose estimates ranged from 0.52 to 1.14 Gy2 and from 8.1 to 33.3%2 for the fraction of cells irradiated.

Conclusions: Automated DCA can differentiate whole- from partial-body radiation exposures and provides timely quantification of estimated whole-body equivalent dose.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Citation of this paper:

Estimating partial body ionizing radiation exposure by automated cytogenetic biodosimetry Ben C. Shirley, Joan H.M. Knoll, Jayne Moquet, Elizabeth Ainsbury, Pham Ngoc Duy, Farrah Norton, Ruth C. Wilkins, Peter K. Rogan bioRxiv 2020.09.01.278200; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.01.278200