Comprehensive radiological parameterizations of proton and alpha particle interactions for some selected biomolecules: theoretical computation

Abstract

Investigation of the interaction of radiations with biomolecules has several applications in the fields of radiation biophysics, radiation protection, medical biology, and medical physics. In this study, a comprehensive radiological parameterization of proton and alpha particles interactions at the energy range of (1 keV–10 GeV) and (1 keV–1 GeV), respectively for nucleotide bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, uracil, thymine), carbohydrates (glucose, sucrose, raffinose), lipids (cholesterol, retinol, progesterone, cortisone, and phylloquinone), and fatty acids (lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, linolenic, arachidonic, and arachidic) biomolecules have been carried out using PAGEX computer software. The radiological parameters calculated are the mass stopping power (S(E)/ρ), mass stopping cross-section (S c), effective atomic number (Z eff), and effective electron density (N eff). The highest values of S(E)/ρ and S c of proton and alpha particle interactions with the biomolecules occurred at the kinetic energy of about 0.1 and 0.5 MeV, respectively while that of the Z eff and N eff occurred at 0.1 MeV and 1 MeV, respectively. The S(E)/ρ and S c similarly vary with the kinetic energy due to their relations. As expected, the dependence of the Z eff and N eff of the biomolecules on the incidence energy was found to be similar. The comparisons of the Z eff and N eff calculated in this study, using PAGEX software with some studies in the literature that used the interpolation method showed variations that account for differences between the two methods.