Compound Poisson Statistics and Models of Clustering of Radiation Induced DNA Double Strand Breaks

According to the experimental evidence damage induced by densely ionizing radiation in mammalian cells is distributed along the DNA molecule in the form of clusters. The most critical constituent of DNA damage are double-strand breaks (DSBs) which are formed when the breaks occur in both DNA strands and are directly opposite or separated by only a few base pairs. The paper discusses a model of clustered DSB formation viewed in terms of compound Poisson process along with the predictive assay of the formalism in application to experimental data.