background: boron and gadolinium are among the nuclides that hold a unique property of being a neutron capture therapy agent. neutron beams have often a considerable portion of gamma rays with fast neutrons. gamma rays, as beam contaminants, can cause considerable damage to normal tissues even if such tissues do contain high boron concentrations. materials and methods: the modification of radio...

The University of Missouri Research Reactor has designed and constructed a thermal neutron beam line for use in small animal boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) experiments. Details of the facility have been previously reported by Brockman et al.[1] and Pozzi et al.[2]. The facility utilizes a 15.24 cm diameter beam tube that extends from the beryllium reflector to the biological shield, a dis...

The latest advances in the development of a fluorescent nuclear track detector (FNTD) for neutron and heavy charged particle dosimetry are described and compared with CR-39 plastic nuclear etched track detectors (PNTDs). The technique combines a new luminescent aluminium oxide single crystal detector (Al(2)O(3):C,Mg) with an imaging technique based on laser scanning and confocal fluorescence de...

Applications of cyclotrons in biomedical fields like radioisotope production; activation and reaction analysis with charged particles and neutrons both in-vitro and in vivo types; production of fast neutron beams for therapy, etc. are described. Production yields of various isotopes in use through different nuclear reactions have been compared with the yields calculated using experimentally mea...

A new approach to fast-neutron dosimeq is described. It involves circulating a liquid with dissolved chemicals between a localized neutron field and a remote area where neutron-induced radioactivities are measured continuously. This approach employs reactions whch generate relatively short-lived radioactive byproducts. Sensitivity to the neutron energy spectrum is achieved by choosing several r...

Prior studies revealed neutron beam-induced alkali-metal spin relaxation in He cells polarized in-situ by spin-exchange optical pumping. These effects are minor for neutron beams of low to moderate intensity, but become important at the highest neutron flux levels available in the full spectrum beams of high flux neutron sources. It was found that the relaxation consisted of a fast and a slow c...

While cosmic ray muons themselves are relatively easy to veto in underground detectors, their interactions with nuclei create more insidious backgrounds via: (i) the decays of long-lived isotopes produced by muon-induced spallation reactions inside the detector, (ii) spallation reactions initiated by fast muon-induced neutrons entering from outside the detector, and (iii) nuclear recoils initia...

The neutron energy spectrum from the atomic bomb consisted of a range of energies from thermal to fast neutrons. Fast neutrons contribute a larger dose to the human body than lowenergy neutrons per unit flux. The evaluation of the fast neutron component has been performed based on analyses of P (>3 MeV) activity measured immediately after the Hiroshima bomb and Ni (>2 MeV), which has a much lon...

Many of the most exotic neutron-proton asymmetric nuclei are produced in relatively small numbers in high-energy fragmentation reactions. They are produced as fast secondary beams with energies of 100 MeV per nucleon or more. Developments made and recent results that both exploit and assess fast oneand two-nucleon removal reactions from such secondary beams are reviewed. This includes very rece...

The paper, in its first part, outlines the place of the fast neutron therapy (FNT) in the concert of radiation therapies by listing the active facilities, comparing technical and statistical data, and summarizing distinct biological properties of fast neutrons. The gross situation of Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is mentioned as well. As well as the number of patients is decreasing, FNT ...