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Scandium-47 is a promising radionuclide for targeted radiotherapy and is also an elementally matched therapeutic partner to 43 Sc and 44 Sc, which are suitable for Positron Emission Tomography. The predominantly reported routes for the production of 47 Sc employ expensive enriched titanium or calcium targets to achieve high radionuclidic purity. This study reports measurements of the excitation function of the nat V(p,x) 47 Sc reaction at proton energies of 18-24 MeV to optimize bombardment parameters for the production of 47 Sc using this promising approach. The cross-sections reported here demonstrate that irradiation of vanadium targets can produce >99% radionuclidically pure 47 Sc with a proton energy of 24 MeV, albeit at modest yields., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Beryllium-7 ( 7 Be) was created by proton irradiation of natural ( nat B) and enriched ( 10 B) boron targets. The targets were dissolved in nitric acid, and the 7 Be was separated from the bulk boron target material by cation-exchange chromatography. An average recovery of (99.4 ± 3.7)% was obtained for 6 separations. The purified 7 Be sample was placed into a batch-mode ion source to create a 7 Be beam that was delivered at an average rate of 5 × 10 5 pps to end users at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The radionuclide 149 Tb (t 1/2  = 4.1 h) is a potential theranostic isotope which can simultaneously be used for targeted-alpha-particle therapy and positron-emission tomography. Feasibility experiments were performed to test a near-symmetric heavy-ion reaction of 63 Cu bombardment on monoisotopic 89 Y. The indirect reaction was studied to avoid isomer production. Offline gamma spectroscopy was used to quantify thick-target physical yields and experimental results show modest agreement to the fusion-evaporation code PACE4. A near-symmetric fission yield was also observed., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This work focused on the production and purification of the positron emitter 52 Mn (t 1/2  = 5.6 d) via the nat Cr(p,n) 52 Mn reaction, using a TR24 cyclotron and a semi-automated system for the purification of 52 Mn. Based on two-column and three-column systems, the recovery of 52 Mn was 79.7 ± 6.2% (n = 3) and 70.8 ± 3.3% (n = 3), with processing times of 6.9 ± 0.5 h and 8.2 ± 0.6 h, respectively., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Titanium-45 (t 1/2  = 3.08 h) is a radiometal with excellent nuclear characteristics, including a high positron branching ratio (85%) and low average positron energy (0.439 MeV), for the development of PET imaging agents. 45 Ti was produced via the 45 Sc(p,n) 45 Ti reaction on the University of Alabama at Birmingham TR24 cyclotron in GBq quantities. Optimized separation methods were developed and preliminary radiochemistry studies were also carried out. This work shows 45 Ti is a promising radiometal for future studies., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

As part of an effort to develop aqueous isotope harvesting techniques at radioactive beam facilities, 48 V and a cocktail of primary- and secondary-beam ions created by the fragmentation reaction of a 160 MeV/nucleon 58 Ni beam were stopped in an aqueous target cell. After collection, 48 V was separated from the mixture of beam ions using cation-exchange chromatography. The extraction efficiency from the aqueous solution was (47.0 ± 2.5)%, and the isolated 48 V had a radiochemical purity of 95.8%. This proof-of-concept work shows that aqueous isotope harvesting could provide significant quantities of rare isotopes which are currently unavailable at conventional facilities., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Manganese-52g, 54 and Chromium-51 production cross-section measurements were conducted using natural chromium foils and copper monitor foils. Proton beam energies between 10 and 20 MeV were used for target bombardment. After bombardment, the irradiated foils were allowed to decay for at least 48 h and radioactivity was quantified using a high-purity germanium detector. The maximum 52g Mn cross-section was 90.8 ± 16.0 mb at 14.3 ± 0.8 MeV. These data contribute to the existing nuclear data for cyclotron production of 52g Mn at low to medium proton energies., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

For PET radionuclides, the radioactivity of a sample can be conveniently measured by a dose calibrator. These devices depend on a "calibration setting number", but many recommended settings from manuals were interpolated based on standard sources of other radionuclide(s). We conducted HPGe gamma-ray spectroscopy, resulting in a reference for determining settings in two types of vessels containing one of several PET radionuclides. Our results reiterate the notion that in-house, experimental calibrations are recommended for different radionuclides and vessels., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The production of positron-emitting isotopes of manganese is potentially important for developing contrast agents for dual-modality positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance (PET/MR) imaging, as well as for in vivo imaging of the biodistribution and toxicity of manganese. The decay properties of (52)Mn make it an excellent candidate for these applications, and it can easily be produced by bombardment of a chromium target with protons or deuterons from a low-energy biomedical cyclotron. Several parameters that are essential to this mode of production—target thickness, beam energy, beam current, and bombardment time—depend heavily on the availability of reliable, reproducible cross-section data. This work contributes to the routine production of (52g)Mn for biomedical research by contributing experimental cross-sections for natural chromium ((nat)Cr) targets for the (nat)Cr(p,x)(52g)Mn reaction, as well as for the production of the radiocontaminants (52m,54)Mn., (Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Effective specific activity of (64)Cu (amount of radioactivity per µmol metal) is important in order to determine purity of a particular (64)Cu lot and to assist in optimization of the purification process. Metal impurities can affect effective specific activity and therefore it is important to have a simple method that can measure trace amounts of metals. This work shows that ion chromatography (IC) yields similar results to ICP mass spectrometry for copper, nickel and iron contaminants in (64)Cu production solutions., (Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Interest in using (68)Ga is rapidly increasing for clinical PET applications due to its favorable imaging characteristics and increased accessibility. The focus of this study was to provide our long-term evaluations of the two TiO(2)-based (68)Ge/(68)Ga generators and develop an optimized automation strategy to synthesize [(68)Ga]DOTATOC by using HEPES as a buffer system. This data will be useful in standardizing the evaluation of (68)Ge/(68)Ga generators and automation strategies to comply with regulatory issues for clinical use., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

An automated system for the production of high specific activity (64)Cu via the irradiation of electroplated enriched (64)Ni targets has been developed. We have been operating this system continually on a biweekly or weekly basis for more than two years. Since the inception of this automated production system, (October 1, 2008), we have had 145 productions, produced 53562 mCi and shipped out 25629 mCi of this isotope to external users. We routinely produce over 400 mCi of this isotope per batch with a specific activity of 14,000 ± 7600 mCi/μmol for distribution to some 12-15 centers each production., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)