Summary of recent BNCT Polish programme and future plans.
In this work we present Polish achievements on the ground of BNCT research. Starting from preliminary built therapeutic stand at MARIA reactor going through designing of unique detectors for in-phantom and in-beam measurements for mixed radiation fields and finally coming to boron carriers synthesizing and examination in cellular and animal models. Now it is planned to restart research on boron compounds in specially designed BIMA line, to set up epithermal neutron irradiation facility for BNCT research and education and to improve recombination detectors for neutron beams characterisation.
A virtual model of the patient's head for BNCT
A virtual model of the patient's head for BNCT The aim of the present work was creating a virtual phantom of a human head for BNCT, as a part of the BNCT programme project. This model is an amplification of the simple model described in earlier publications. It takes into account the major head organs as well as the scalp and skull. The chemical composition of all tissues was modelled according to the recommendations of the ICRP. The organs were parameterized using mathematical formulas based on the human head magnetic resonance images. The model was used for calculating the thermal neutron flux and the injuring (fast neutron, nitrogen and gamma) dose components for the head irradiated using the therapeutic neutron beam, whose parameters were obtained as the result of the modelling of the filter/moderator system for the BNCT therapeutic beam from the MARIA reactor.
NMR characteristics of intracellular K in the rat salivary gland: a 39K NMR study using double-quantum filtering.
Intracellular K of the perfused rat mandibular salivary gland was measured by 39K NMR spectroscopy at 8.45 T. Multiple-quantum NMR arising from multiple-exponential decay was used to eliminate the resonance due to extracellular K in the perfused gland at 25 degrees C. The resonance due to intracellular K consisted of two Lorentzian signals stemming from the [spin 1/2 to -1/2] coherence (sharp resonance) and the [spin -1/2 to -3/2], [spin 3/2 to 1/2] coherences (broad resonance). The transverse relaxation time (T2) corresponding to the [spin 1/2 to -1/2] coherence was ca. 2.5 ms, and that corresponding to the [spin -1/2 to -3/2], [spin 3/2 to 1/2] coherences was ca. 0.4 ms. The relaxation time of the double-quantum coherence of rank 3 (originating from product operators like Ix2Iz) was determined to be ca. 0.2 ms. These results suggest the possibility of the presence of a single homogeneous population of intracellular K with a correlation time of ca. 2.5 x 10(-8) s and a quadrupolar coupling constant of ca. 1.4 MHz.