Development of novel radionuclides for medical applications

Medical radionuclide production technology is well established. There is, however, a constant need for further development of radionuclides. The present efforts are mainly devoted to nonstandard positron emitters (eg, 64Cu, 86Y, 124I, and 73Se) and novel therapeutic radionuclides emitting low‐range β− particles (eg, 67Cu and 186Re), conversion or Auger electrons (eg, 117mSn and 77Br), and α particles (eg, 225Ac). A brief account of various aspects of development work (ie, nuclear data, targetry, chemical processing, and quality control) is given. For each radionuclide under consideration, the status of technology for clinical scale production is discussed. The increasing need of intermediate‐energy multiple‐particle accelerating cyclotrons is pointed out.