About this Research Topic

Background

Recently, Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) became popular and crucial as a leading edge radiation therapy for cancers worldwide. BNCT can kill tumor cells by alpha and Lithium particles emitted by a neutron-10B nuclear reaction. The charged particles have a range of around 10 μm, which is a similar size to a human body cell. Consequently, BNCT has a clear advantage of selectively killing tumor cells compared to other radiation therapies. In Japan an accelerator based BNCT system, instead of a nuclear reactor based one, was approved first in the world by the government and became in practical use to conduct BNCT. Soon, not only in Japan but also other countries, BNCT will become one of the choices for reliable cancer therapy.

BNCT is a radiation therapy for cancers. Since radiation might sometimes be harmful to the human body, the detection and measurement is critically crucial for the spreading of BNCT. However, this is not straightforward. The reason is that BNCT uses neutrons, especially epithermal neutrons, which was not commonly used for nuclear applications, and thus high-energy gamma-rays are created at the same time, forming a mixed field of neutron and gamma-ray. Such radiations are thus irradiated to a patient during the treatment. This is completely different from the situation of other radiation facilities, in which radiation measurement is carried out after switch-off of the machine or outside the machine if the machine is operating. In BNCT, neutrons are directly irradiated to a human body, and we need to measure all the radiations including incident neutrons, secondary neutrons, induced other particles like gamma-rays and X-rays.

The present Research Topic includes all radiation measuring techniques in the above radiation field. The field contains neutrons from thermal to fast energies of several tens MeV, and gamma-rays up to 10 MeV produced mainly by (n,γ) reaction. The physical quantities of interest are neutron source intensity for various nuclear reactions, neutron flux intensity on the surface of the beam shaping assembly (BSA), on the patient and so on, treatment effect (local boron dose), exposure doses due to neutron and gamma-ray. In this Research Topic we include theoretical research for the above quantities, experimental approaches with detectors, and furthermore design, validation and characterization of targeted accelerator based neutron sources as well as reactor based ones for BNCT. Additionally, the Research Topic is not only of interest for the BNCT community, but also for researchers in nuclear medicine working on treatment and dosimetry.

All manuscript types are welcome in this Research Topic.

Keywords: BSA design, dose measurement, neutron flux, mixed field, accelerator based neutron source, radiation detection, radiation measurement

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