[en] The Feynman-α method has been developed for monitoring sub-criticality in nuclear fuel facilities. It is difficult to apply the Feynman-α method which estimates statistical variation of the number of neutron counts per unit time, to the system in transient condition such that the averaged neutron flux varies with time. In the application of Feynman-α method to such system, it is suggested to remove the averaged variation of neutron flux from neutron count data by the use of the difference filter. In this study, we applied the difference filter to reactor noise data at sub-criticality near to criticality, where the prompt decay constant was difficult to estimate due to the large effect of delayed neutron. With the difference filter, accurate prompt decay constants for effective multiplication factors from 0.999 to 0.994 were obtained by Feynman-α method. It was cleared that the difference filter is effective to estimate accurate prompt decay constant, so that there is the prospect to be able to apply Feynman-α method having the difference filter to the system in the transient condition. (author)