Towards quasi-biological nanodosimetry

The increasing utilization of charged particle beams for therapeutic purposes requires designing novel detector systems which shall be capable of assessing radiation quality for a diversity of ion species. It is shown that the pattern of energy deposition in thermoluminescent phosphors and biological tissue contains conceptual parallels. The correlation of physical and radiobiological parameters observed experimentally for specific endpoints (single- and double-strand breaks of DNA) opens the possibility of realizing successfully quasi-biological solid-state nanodosimetry on the basis of thermoluminescence.