Thus, the microbeam is a tool for investigators to study intra- and inter-cellular mechanisms of damage signal transduction.
While irradiating targeted regions, the system must guarantee that adjacent locations receive no energy deposition.
For example, in the case of domestic radon exposure, cancer risk estimation involves epidemiological studies of uranium miners.
The average lifetime radon exposure of these miners is high enough that cancer risk estimates are driven by data on individuals whose target bronchial cells are subjected to multiple alpha particle traversals.
Microbeam techniques can overcome this limitation by delivering an exact number (one or more) of particles per cell nucleus.
The application of such systems to low frequency processes such as oncogenic transformation depends very much on the technology involved.
Particles must be counted with a high degree of detection efficiency in order to guarantee that a specific number of ions are delivered to a single cell.
In these systems, zone plates are used to focus characteristic x rays generated from a target hit by a charged particle beam.
Many biological endpoints have been studied including oncogenic transformation, apoptosis, mutations, and chromosomal aberrations.
There have been nine international workshops, held approximately once every two years, on Microbeam Probes of Cellular Radiation Response.