Determination of boron concentration in whole blood by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry for boron neutron capture therapy

Horiguchi, Hironori; Yamamoto, Kazuyoshi ; Kishi, Toshiaki ; Otake, Shinichi*; Kumada, Hiroaki*

The boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) has been conducted at JRR-4. There is an increased number of cases due to the expansion of application against head and neck cancer and skin cancer. Therefore, the BNCT requires the establishment of procedure to perform more cases in a day. The determination of boron concentration in blood is important to determine the prescribed dose given to a patient. Currently, prompt ray analysis (PGA) is applied to the determination of boron concentration. But the PGA is not applied to more than three times BNCT a day. Therefore, swiftness and precision method by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) is studied. Using BSH for Boron standard of the ICP-AES, we enabled to analyze accurately without an intricate sample preparation. The measurement precision of the ICP-AES was within 5% by the correction factor based on the PGA. We established the method of swiftness determination of boron concentration in blood for BNCT.