Brain imaging using fast neutron spectroscopy

Most clinical methods of imaging the brain rely on imaging the anatomic and functional changes accompanying disease in brain tissue. This approach, although successful, has two limitations: first, the abnormality of interest must be large enough to be imaged using existing technologies, and second, confirmation of the abnormality usually requires a biopsy. To overcome limitations, we describe here a new method of brain imaging that uses fast neutrons to image the element distribution within the brain tissue and identify disease based on relative concentration gradients in different regions of the brain. The method, called Neutron Stimulated Emission Computed Tomography, has been successfully tested previously in imaging cancers in the breast, liver, kidneys and colon. Here we describe a study demonstrating the potential of the technology in detecting deep-seated brain tumors using a different signature compared to other imaging methods.