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Nuclear data for medical radionuclides

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Abstract

Radionuclides are used in medicine both for diagnosis and therapy. The radioactive decay data play a key role in the choice of a radionuclide for a certain application. The nuclear reaction data, on the other hand, allow to optimise the production route of a chosen radionuclide. The status of nuclear data of the commonly used diagnostic and therapeutic radionuclides is reviewed and the recent efforts to standardise those data are described. The expected specific activity of the cyclotron produced 99mTc is briefly discussed. The present efforts are devoted to development of non-standard positron emitters (e.g. 64Cu, 86Y, etc.) and low-range highly-ionising therapeutic radionuclides (e.g. 67Cu, 225Ac, etc.). The need of intermediate-energy multiple-particle accelerating cyclotrons is pointed out.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Dr. B. Scholten for a useful discussion and Mr. S. Spellerberg for help in the preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Institut für Neurowissenschaften und Medizin, INM-5 (Nuklearchemie), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    Syed M. Qaim

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This article is based on a Plenary Lecture given by the author at the 8th International Conference on Isotopes and EXPO, Chicago, USA, August 2014.

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Qaim, S.M. Nuclear data for medical radionuclides. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 305, 233–245 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-014-3923-2

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