Optimized non-conventional radioisotopes production with industrial mid-energy cyclotron

Samy Bertrand^a, Jean-Michel Geets^a, Benoit Nactergal^a, Fabienne Devillet^a, Eric Kral^a, Sebastien de Neuter^a, Jozef Comor^b, Francisco Alves^c
aIBA SA,Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. ^bELEX Commerce, Novi Beograd, Serbia. ^cUniversity of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

While fluorine (¹⁸F) is still one of the most used radionuclides in PET procedures, other metallic non-conventional radioisotopes, such as copper-64 (⁶⁴Cu), zirconium-89 (⁸⁹Zr), scandium-44 (⁴⁴Sc) and undeniably gallium-68 (⁶⁸Ga) are gaining interest as it is confirmed by growing numbers of publications. The production of these radioisotopes usually requires more sophisticated infrastructure and their intrinsically low production yields often limit the levels of activity produced. This paper presents the solutions developed in order to increase the production rates and facilitate production processes of non-conventional radioisotopes on an industrial mid-energy cyclotron, while preserving its compactness and simplicity.