Modern utilization of an accurate method for detecting essential elements in whole blood using low energy photons

The objective of the proposed work was to measure concentration of six essential elements, Ca, Cu, Fe, Mn, Sr, and Zn directly in whole blood. The adopted method is based on the theory of attenuation of low energy photons through the whole blood sample. Photons are completely absorbed at energy region approximately (25–100 keV), of K‐absorption edge for especially low‐Z elements and at L‐absorption edge especially for high‐Z elements. Children, adults, and old people from whom the blood samples are taken are considered as subjects in this study. The aim of this work is not to investigate any disease or specific elemental changes. Blood samples were irradiated by 22.0, 31.0, and 59.5 keV photons emitted by ¹⁰⁸Cd (1.78 GBq), ¹³³Ba (2.92 GBq), and ²⁴¹Am (2.78 GBq) radioactive point source. A high resolution high pure germanium spectrometer has been used to detect low energy photons with low counts peaks. When compared to the existing data in literature, it has been found that the results obtained in this study agree well with those reported. There are many advantages of this technique over other methods such as being practical, inexpensive, non‐destructive, and can also do analysis fast. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.