Khanna Ruhani, Reinwald Yvonne, Hugtenburg Richard P, Bertolet Alejandro, Serjouei Ahmad
Department of Engineering, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Medical Technologies Innovation Facility, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Rev Phys. 2025 Dec;13. doi: 10.1016/j.revip.2025.100110. Epub 2025 Feb 11.
GEANT4-DNA is an expansion of the widely utilised GEANT4 Monte Carlo toolkit. This extension focuses on modelling the physical, chemical, and biological stages of ionising radiation for radiobiological applications at cellular and DNA level interactions. To date, review papers on GEANT4-DNA focus solely on evaluating a selection of the latest developments with a greater focus on mechanistic developments rather than progress in biologically specific geometries. In this work, an overview of biological analysis and biological geometries that have been developed are discussed, highlighting the latest developments and future possible development avenues for GEANT4-DNA for this application. An overview of the biological organisation levels, namely DNA, cellular, and population levels, and how GEANT4-DNA models the physical, chemical, and biological processes are also described. This review emphasises the need for persistent development of specific biological geometry accompanied by personalised DNA damage analysis parameters dependent on the biological processes considered within a specific model. It also provides an in-depth understanding of the advances at all the biological organisation levels (DNA, cellular, and population) and the use of co-operative platforms developed to model alongside GEANT4 to provide further detailed geometries and or biological damage analysis. The developments presented have been analytically discussed along with their key findings and prospects for GEANT4-DNA. Finally, a perspective on future necessary developments is portrayed since many of the advancements in the biological analysis and biological geometries discussed have not been exploited to their full potential. The development of GEANT4-DNA, using the advances discussed in this review, provides a favourable method for the evaluation of biological damage comparable to radiobiological studies.
GEANT4-DNA是广泛使用的GEANT4蒙特卡罗工具包的扩展。此扩展专注于对电离辐射在细胞和DNA层面相互作用的放射生物学应用中的物理、化学和生物学阶段进行建模。迄今为止，关于GEANT4-DNA的综述文章仅专注于评估一系列最新进展，更侧重于机理发展而非生物特定几何结构方面的进展。在这项工作中，讨论了已开发的生物分析和生物几何结构的概述，突出了GEANT4-DNA在此应用中的最新进展和未来可能的发展途径。还描述了生物组织层次的概述，即DNA、细胞和群体层次，以及GEANT4-DNA如何对物理、化学和生物学过程进行建模。本综述强调了持续开发特定生物几何结构的必要性，以及依赖于特定模型中所考虑生物过程的个性化DNA损伤分析参数。它还深入介绍了所有生物组织层次（DNA、细胞和群体）的进展，以及为与GEANT4一起建模而开发的协作平台的使用情况，以提供更详细的几何结构和/或生物损伤分析。文中介绍的进展已结合其关键发现和GEANT4-DNA的前景进行了分析讨论。最后，描绘了对未来必要发展的展望，因为所讨论的生物分析和生物几何结构方面的许多进展尚未得到充分利用。利用本综述中讨论的进展来开发GEANT4-DNA，为评估与放射生物学研究相当的生物损伤提供了一种有利的方法。
