Calculated DNA Damage from Gadolinium Auger Electrons and Relation to Dose Distributions in a Head Phantom

Purpose: To calculate the number of 157Gadolinium (157Gd) neutron capture induced DNA double strand breaks (DSB) in tumor cells resulting from epithermal neutron irradiation of a human head when the peak tissue dose is 10 Gy. To assess the lethality of these Gd induced DSB.Materials and Methods: DNA single and double strand breaks from Auger electrons emitted during 157Gd(n,gamma) events were calculated using an atomistic model of B‐DNA with higher‐order structure. When combined with gadolinium neutron capture reaction rates and neutron and photon physical dose rates calculated from the radiation transport through a model of the human head with explicit tumors, peak tissue dose can be related to the number of Auger electron induced DSB in tumor cell DNA. The lethality of these DNA DSB were assessed through a comparison with incorporated 125I decay cell survival curves and second comparison with the number of DSB resulting from neutron and photon interactions.Results: These calculations on a molecular scal...