Purpose: The goal was to compare the micronucleus (MN) and dicentric plus ring chromosomes (D + R) assays for dose assessment in cases of partial body irradiations (PBI). Materials and methods: We constructed calibration curves for each assay at doses ranging from 0 to 5 Gy of X-rays at dose rate of 0.275 Gy/min. To simulate partial-body exposures, blood samples from two donors were irradiated with 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 Gy and the ratios of irradiated to unirradiated blood were 25, 50, and 100%. Different tests were used to confirm if all samples were overdispersed or zero-inflated and for partial-body dose assessment we used the Qdr, Dolphin and Bayesian model. Results: In our samples for D + R calibration curve, practically all doses agreed with Poisson assumption, but MN exhibited overdispersed and zero-inflated cellular distributions. The exact Poisson tests and zero-inflated tests demonstrate that virtually all samples of D + R from PBI simulation fit the Poisson distribution and were not zero-inflated, but the MN samples were also overdispersed and zero-inflated. In the partial-body estimation, when Qdr and Dolphin methods were used the D + R results were better than MN, but the doses estimation defined by the Bayesian methodology were more accurate than the classical methods. Conclusions: Dicentric chromosomes continue to prove to be the best biological marker for dose assessment. However exposure scenarios of partial-body estimation, overdispersion and zero-inflation may not occur, it being a critical point not only for dose assessment, but also to confirm partial-body exposure. MN could be used as alternative assay for partial-body dose estimation, but in case of an accident without any information, the MN assay could not define whether the accident was a whole-body irradiation (WBI) or a PBI.
Keywords: Dicentrics; micronucleus; partial-body estimation; zero-inflation.