Previously submitted to: JMIR Biomedical Engineering (no longer under consideration since May 12, 2026)
Date Submitted: Aug 15, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 18, 2025 - Oct 13, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Innovative method of superimposing Gamma-CBCT images with live confocal imaging to assess Cellular Responses to Radiation
ABSTRACT
Background:
Understanding the real-time effects of radiation on live cells remains a challenge due to limitations in current imaging and targeting techniques. Traditional methods like clonogenic assays and fixed-cell imaging fail to capture dynamic and spatially-resolved cellular responses.
Objective:
This study introduces and evaluates three novel phantom-based methodologies designed to visualize and analyze radiation-induced changes in live cells with high spatial precision.
Methods:
All three techniques employed confocal imaging dishes embedded in brain-mimicking agarose gel phantoms. Live cells were cultured on treated glass-bottom dishes and exposed to targeted gamma radiation. Technique 1 involved direct embedding of the dish without any positional markers. Technique 2 incorporated a small metal grid and aperture film to partially localize radiation effects. Technique 3 employed a full-scale metal grid for precise spatial mapping and dose-effect correlation. Cone-beam CT (CBCT) was used for localization, and post-radiation cellular effects were assessed using confocal microscopy.
Results:
Technique 1 allowed basic observation of radiation effects but lacked spatial localization. Technique 2 enabled partial localization via CBCT, yet limitations in grid size and imaging overlay reduced resolution. Technique 3 demonstrated superior precision, enabling clear mapping of dose-dependent cellular responses in individual grid sections. However, challenges such as metal-media interaction and grid handling remained.
Conclusions:
The full-scale metal grid approach (Technique 3) offers a powerful platform for studying real-time radiation effects on live cells with high spatial resolution. These findings open new avenues in radiobiology, particularly in optimizing radiotherapy protocols and investigating radiation damage mechanisms. Further refinements, including grid material optimization and integration with advanced imaging modalities, are warranted.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.