95gTc and 96gTc as alternatives to medical radioisotope 99mTc

Takehito Hayakawa; Yuichi Hatsukawa; Toru Tanimori

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2017.e00497

^95gTc and ^96gTc as alternatives to medical radioisotope ^99mTc

Heliyon. 2018 Jan 8;4(1):e00497. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2017.e00497. eCollection 2018 Jan.

Authors

Takehito Hayakawa¹, Yuichi Hatsukawa¹, Toru Tanimori²

Affiliations

¹ Tokai Quantum Science Center, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Ibaraki 319-1106, Japan.
² Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.

Abstract

We studied ^95gTc and ^96gTc as alternatives to the medical radioisotope ^99mTc. ^96gTc (^95gTc) can be produced by (p, n) reactions on an enriched ⁹⁶Mo (⁹⁵Mo) target with a proton beam provided by a compact accelerator such as a medical cyclotron that generate radioisotopes for positron emission tomography (PET). The γ-rays are measured with an electron-tracking Compton camera (ETCC). We calculated the relative intensities of the γ-rays from ^95gTc and ^96gTc. The calculated γ-ray intensity of a ^96gTc (^95gTc) nucleus is as high as 63% (70%) of that of a ^99mTc nucleus. We also calculated the patient radiation doses of ^95gTc and ^96gTc, which were larger than that of ^99mTc by a factor of 2-3 based on the applied assumptions. A medical PET cyclotron which can provide proton beams with energies of 11-12 MeV and a current of 100 μA can produce 12 GBq (39 GBq) of ^96gTc (^95gTc) for operation time of 8 h, which can be used for 240 (200) diagnostic scans.

Keywords: Nuclear engineering; Nuclear medicine; Nuclear physics.