Use of thermal neutrons to perform clinical analyses in blood and urine samples

Summary In this study we show that the NAA technique can be used to perform clinical analyses of blood and urine, with many advantages towards the conventional methods. From the knowledge of the neutron flux and the induced activity, the concentration ofelements were obtained. In comparison to the conventional techniques, this methodology uses smaller quantities of biological material and allows the simultaneous evaluation of the concentrations of several elements in biological samples at once, something not always possible in the conventional clinical analysis. Another important advantage is that it eliminates the use of standard materials, thus making the analyzing process practical and economic.