[Table of Contents]

Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 9, 4401107 (2014)

Regular Articles

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) - Low-Energy Neutron Spectrometer for Neutron Field Characterization -
Isao MURATA and Tsubasa OBATA
Division of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
(Received 24 July 2013 / Accepted 5 December 2013 / Published 27 June 2014)

Abstract

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is known to be a promising and new cancer therapy which can kill tumor cells suppressing damage to normal tissues. Recently, accelerator based neutron sources (ABNS) for BNCT are under development especially in Japan. For characterization of the neutron field, we carried out the series study concerning thermal/epi-thermal neutron spectrometry especially for ABNS based BNCT. In the present study, we tested a commercially available position sensitive 3He proportional counter as the neutron detector combined with a measuring system using a multi-parameter MCA and a thermal/epi-thermal column designed and constructed for test measurements. From the results, the characteristics of the spectrometer were obtained through the basic experiments. Also, spectrum measurements were carried out with the thermal/epi-thermal neutron field. Agreement between the calculation and measurement was acceptable for both cases, showing that measurement would be possible for neutron energy from 0.01 eV to 10 keV. The spectrometer is hence expected to be applied to characterization measurement of the neutron field in the real BNCT scene in the future.

Keywords

cancer, radiation therapy, boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), position sensitive proportional counter, 3He detector, neutron spectrometer, epi-thermal neutron

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.9.4401107

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This paper may be cited as follows:

Isao MURATA and Tsubasa OBATA, Plasma Fusion Res. 9, 4401107 (2014).