Morphological identification of not growing bacteria for neutron radiography

The technological development associate the new discoveries in the genetic field, has contributed for an improvement in the diagnosis of determined illnesses, however the laboratories analysis nor always are carried through in desired the minimum time and precision, beyond not being optimized the financial resources. The result of these controversies can lead the loss of possibilities of overlife of the patients, taking them, also to the death. At present time, exist an expensive equipment capable to identify fastly a commons bacteria. However, to achieve reliable diagnostics, microorganisms have to grow in appropriate culture media before identification, what sometimes can take a great amount of time, making it difficult the diagnosis. Some of them, also, are not growing in artificial nutrients, being possible only its diagnosis after an inoculation carried through in laboratory guinea pigs, as in the case of the Mycobacterium leprae. Neutron radiography has been used for several years as a non-destructive technique with several applications. Giving credit itself the potentiality of this technique for the faster identification of bacteria in comparison with the conventional microbiological techniques, because there's no need for the overnight cultures. In this work was decided to proceed to the evaluation of the technique and the determination of the involved parameters. The work had demonstrated that the method can come to be promising, as a method auxiliary to already the existing ones, it is intended to give to continuity the research concentrating itself in the evaluation of the method for application in hemocultures and administer it in the diagnosis of bacteria that not growing in artificial ways, such as the Mycobacterium leprae. (author)