TABLE OF CONTENTS A list of reactor-produced radionuclides of current interest to nuclear medicine is given in TABLE 1 along with modes of production and corresponding nuclear cross sections. From this list, the production and a brief description of chemical processing of the following radionuclides will be discussed:
Molybdenum-99 produced by fission and neutron capture reactions,
Iodine-131 produced by fission and neutron capture reactions,
Indium-114m produced by neutron capture reactions,
Iodine-125 produced by neutron capture followed by ? ? decay,
Tungsten-188 produced by double neutron capture,
Tin-117m produced by neutron inelastic scattering,
Copper-67 produced by fast neutron-induced reactions.
Radionuclide uses in diagnostic medicine have increased tremendously in the past several decades, and today one-third of the annual 40 to 50 million diagnostic procedures in the United States are performed with radionuclides. The most widely used radionuclide in nuclear medicine is technetium-99m ( 99mTc, T 1/2=6.0 h), the daughter of 66 h molybdenum-99 ( 99Mo). Tc-99m is used in 70% of all radionuclide diagnostic procedures with an estimated 16 million medical tests per year (approximately 45 000 per day) and 4 5 billion dollars cost to patients annually in the USA.
Tc-99m decays by > 99% IT to the ground state of 99Tc ( T 1/2=2.1 10 5 a) with emission of a 140.5 keV ? ray with probability of 89% and about 10% of all IT effects occurs...
