Results of a comparative study of the figure of merit (FOM) for various techniques for the detection of explosives and narcotics using neutrons as the interrogating radiation are presented. The calculations use the flux and energy of neutrons, the cross sections of nuclear reactions, the type and quantity of target material, the geometry of the detection system and the efficiency of the neutron and (gamma) ray detectors for arriving at the FOM of the detection systems based on neutron elastic scatter, associated particle imaging, pulsed fast neutron analysis, and pulsed fast-thermal neutron analysis.
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