Abstract
Light flashes (phosphenes) are reported by most of the astronauts during spaceflight
and patients treated with radiotherapy for brain tumors. They are induced by cosmic
ray traversals, but the target area is unknown. With a correlation analysis of the
visual sensation and the position of the beam in patients treated with energetic carbon
ions for skull base tumors, we demonstrate here that light flashes are elicited only
when the energetic particles hit the retina.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 29, 2012
Accepted:
August 18,
2012
Received:
July 15,
2012
Footnotes
This work was partly supported by the European Space Agency (IBER contract).
Identification
Copyright
© 2013 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
