Fig. 5From: Modeling the effect of intratumoral heterogeneity of radiosensitivity on tumor response over the course of fractionated radiation therapyComparison of treatment response of tumors characterized by different distribution widths in Eq. (3) and centered at same α and β parameters. a-b Pre- and post-treatment α and β distributions of different radiosensitivity heterogeneities (widths) compared to the pre-treatment distribution 4 (D4) in Fig. 4c (dashed ellipses) after a standard fractionation scheme of 70 Gy in 35 daily fractions at 2.0 Gy/day with weekend interruptions. Colormap represents the normalized densities of tumor cell subsets before and after treatment. The red arrows pointing from right to left represents the evolution of α and β from pre- to post-treatment values. c Tumor cell survival in response to fractionated radiotherapy. Shift in the mean values of (d) SF2 and (e) α/β ratio during treatment with respect to the pre-treatment values. f-g Intratumoral composition of radiosensitivity for different cell subsets in distribution 5 (D5) in (a) and distribution 6 (D6) in (b) before, during and after treatment. Pre-treatment parameters in Eq. (3) were σα = 4.5 × 10− 2 Gy− 1 (D5 in a) and σα = 8.5 × 10− 2 Gy− 1 (D6 in b) with σβ = 3.5 × 10− 3 Gy− 2, αc = 0.33 Gy− 1 and βc = 0.033 Gy− 2Back to article page