investigation of auger electron emitting radionuclides effects in therapy using the geant4-dna toolkit: a simulation study

Purpose: the biological effects of ionizing radiation at the cellular and subcellular scales are studied by the number of breaks in the dna molecule that provides a quantitative description of the stochastic aspects of energy deposition at cellular scales. the geant4 code represents a suitable theoretical toolkit in microdosimetry and nanodosimetry. in this study, radiation effects due to auger electrons emitting radionuclides such as 195𝑚 𝑃𝑡 113𝑚 𝐼𝑛, 125 𝐼, and 201 𝑇𝑙 are investigated using the geant4-dna. materials and methods: the geant4-dna is the first open-access software for the simulation of ionizing radiation and biological damage at the dna scale. low-energy electrons, especially auger electron from auger electron emitting radionuclides during the slowing-down process, deposit their energy within a nanometer volume. results: the average number of single-strand breaks (ssb) and double-strand breaks (dsb) of dna as a function of energy and distance from the center of the dna axis are shown. conclusion: the highest dsbs yield has occurred at energies less than 1 kev, and 195𝑚 𝑃𝑡 induces a higher dsbs yield.