Doctors often image patients’ tissues using X rays, magnetic resonance imaging, or various other approaches. A new experiment suggests that scans by beams of fast-moving neutrons may someday join the ranks of diagnostic-imaging tools.
Tumors often accumulate elevated concentrations of elements such as calcium and zinc. By making patterns of these elements visible, neutron scans could potentially reveal aberrant cellular function even before the smallest tumor forms, says Carey Floyd Jr.