Patent ID: 8582712

Claim:
A method for detecting carbon- and/or nitrogen-containing materials, comprising: irradiating a test object by a single pulse of gamma radiation, the test object comprising carbon- and/or nitrogen-containing material; measuring a secondary radiation from decay products of nitrogen-12 and boron-12 isotopes, wherein the nitrogen-12 and boron-12 isotopes are formed by the irradiation of the carbon- and/or nitrogen containing material from the test object; recording one or more time spectra of signals from the secondary radiation; and analyzing the time spectra to determine one or more parameters indicative of a number of nitrogen-12 or boron-12 isotopes with respect to a total number of nitrogen-12 isotopes and boron-12 isotopes, wherein the analyzing of the time-spectra to determine the one or more parameters is performed with data from two or more time intervals of recorded time spectra of signals from the secondary radiation of the test object.