Relative Biological Effectiveness of Carbon Ions in a Rat Prostate Carcinoma In Vivo: Comparison of 1, 2, and 6 Fractions

The study confirmed the increased effectiveness of carbon ions relative to photons over the whole dose range for a highly radioresistant tumor. The maximum RBE below 3 is in line with other published in vivo data. The RBE values may be used to benchmark RBE models. Hypoxia seems to have a major impact on the radiation response, although this still has to be confirmed by dedicated experiments.