Fig. 2

Slope of the dose-dependent cell survival curve (i.e., the coefficient \(\alpha\) in the LQ model) (upper panel) and inactivation cross section \(\sigma _{\text{inact}}\) (lower panel) as functions of LET. The MSA results (solid lines) are compared with experimental data from (Suzuki et al. 1996, 2000; Belli et al. 2008; Tsuruoka et al. 2005) (symbols). The dashed line in the lower panel shows the MSA results with a fixed range of reactive species propagation, independent of LET (see the main text for details)