A practical alpha particle irradiator for studying internal alpha particle exposure.

An alpha particle irradiator has been built in the Radiation Bioengineering Laboratory at Seoul National University (SNU) to investigate the cellular responses to alpha emissions from radon and the progeny. This irradiator is designed to have the energy of alpha particles entering target cells similar to that of alpha emissions from the radon progeny Po-218 and Po-214 residing in the human respiratory tract. For the SNU alpha particle irradiator, an irradiation system is equipped with cell dishes of 4µm thick Mylar bottom and a special setup of cells on slide for gamma-H2AX assay. Dose calibration for the alpha particle irradiator was performed by dual approaches, detection and computer simulation, in consideration of the source-to-target distance (STD) and the size of a cell dish. The uniformity of dose among cells in a dish is achieved by keeping the STD and the size of cell dish in certain ranges. The performance of the SNU alpha particle irradiator has been proven to be reliable through the gamma-H2AX assay with the human lung epithelial cells irradiated.