ABSTRACT
The exceptional FLASH radiation tolerance can potentially widen the therapeutic window between tumor control and normal tissue complication probability for future use in patients. Monte Carlo studies can be of great help on their own or in combination with other modelling approaches to clarify the feasibility or quantitative impact of several of these proposed mechanisms and to facilitate clinical application of FLASH irradiation. Favaudon et al. in 2014 revived the interest in FLASH radiotherapy by reporting the normal tissue sparing effects of FLASH electrons in mouse lung tumor models. According to the hypothesis, under FLASH irradiation regimes a large part of the dissolved oxygen is removed by interacting with radiolytic species in a time scale short enough to exclude any possibility of oxygen re-diffusion from the surrounding non-irradiated volume or blood vessels.
