Design of the CAS-LIBB Single-Ion Microbeam Endstation II

Cellular micro-irradiation is now recognized as a powerful technique to unveil the mechanisms of interaction between ionizing radiation and living cells or tissues. The single-ion microbeam (SIM) is uniquely capable of delivering precisely the predefined number of charged particles (precise doses of radiation) to specific individual cells or sub-cellular targets in situ. No active research in the field concerning the original process of the interaction between low-energy ions and complicated organisms has been reported yet. To address this challenge, the aim of the present design is to further wrestle with multi-dimensional quantitative information from living cells traversed by an exact number of ions real-time rather than endpoints, in the time scale from milliseconds to days.