Greetings, everyone!
Could you tell me, is there any researches about how to account elemental compound of the tissue in the radiotherapy planning? Not only by water or medium, but to account not only water (hydrogen and oxygen), but Ca, K, N, C atoms and scattering on it.
Maybe I have mistaken and there is no point to do that. It will be very kind of you if you tell me, is there such or nearby researches.
Thank you!
Have a good day or night!
You have asked a very broad question, and I hope I can answer you in a short answer.
The fundamental therapeutic radiation physics cares about what interactions between elements and radiations, but that is not the whole picture. Every ionized radiation has its own "cross-section" (probability) to interact the "elements". Cf. the behaviors of uncharged particles (photon, neutron), charged particles (electron, proton, heavy ions, etc.).
For the purpose of radiation therapy, we only care more about the dose (energy/mass) deposited by certain radiation and the various biological responses.
Therefore the complications can come from 2 sides (1) what kinds of radiation particles, and how you deliver the radiation to biological objects, (2) what kind of biological sites the radiation to treat, how to treat by method (teletherapy, brackytherapy, or other), and dosimetric method (dose/fraction, even very high dose rate-FLASH, etc.).
There are studies to create energy deposition kernels (EDK) for different materials, especially prosthetic materials. See two of Jessie Huang articles, Article SU-E-T-554: Dosimetric Impact of Implementing Kernel Hardeni...
and
Article Investigation of various energy deposition kernel refinement...
But most commercial systems do not allow modification of its EDKs for Collapse Cones Convolution/Superposition.
A more precise way to consider the atomic structure and atomic binding of the irradiated material is using planning systems based on Monte Carlo (MC) transport methods. The commercial codes are more rigid to introduce specific materials but easier to use by far. The investigative MC (EGSnrc, Penelope, etc) codes allow you to introduce any material at the cost of being harder to use in clinical conditions.
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