Investigating Alternative Nuclear Reactions for Medical Isotope Production

医用同位素生产中的替代核反应研究 摘要 用于或被认为是核医学良好候选者的放射性核素阵列已在#年扩大。 最近几年。在这些放射性核素中，44Sc和67Cu显示出在诊断和治疗方面的巨大前景 分别用于治疗应用。从研究规模转换44Sc和67Cu相关的挑战 对长期医疗使用来说，大量生产这些放射性核素是困难的。这个 产量限制是由于核反应的低横截面(概率)造成的 这些同位素的纯正供应。由于使用粒子束的生产路线通常用于医疗 同位素(质子、中子、氚)不会产生足够的横截面，拟议的工作旨在 利用重离子束反应进行研究。重离子束，如7Li，提供了产生 67Cu和44Ti(44Sc是44Sc母体)在较高的截面上。拟议的研究将集中在 测量此类反应的横截面。此外，照射后的放射化学将 这样，放射性核素的最终纯度就可以与目前的生产方法进行比较。 更高的产率和可比的放射性核素纯度的成功示范将提供 额外的生产路线来制造这些有价值的医用同位素。

Investigating Alternative Nuclear Reactions for Medical Isotope Production ABSTRACT The array of radionuclides used for, or considered as good candidates for, nuclear medicine has expanded in recent years. Of these radionuclides 44Sc and 67Cu have shown great promise for use in diagnostic and therapeutic applications, respectively. A challenge associated with translating 44Sc and 67Cu from research scale to long-term medical use is the difficulty in producing each of these radionuclides in large quantities. The production limitation is due to the low cross sections (the probability) of the nuclear reactions that create the purist supply of these isotopes. Since production routes using particle beams commonly used for medical isotopes (protons, neutrons, deuterons) do not result in sufficient cross sections, the proposed work aims to investigate employing heavy ion beam reactions. Heavy ion beams, such as 7Li, offer the potential to produce 67Cu and 44Ti (44Ti is the 44Sc parent) at higher cross sections. The proposed research will focus on the measurement of the cross sections for such reactions. Additionally, post irradiation radiochemistry will be performed so that the final purity of the radionuclides can be compared to the current production methods. Successful demonstration of higher production rates with comparable radionuclide purity will offer an additional production route to make these valuable medical isotopes.