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Medical isotope production with the IsoDAR cyclotron

Nature Reviews Physics volume 1, pages 533–535 (2019)Cite this article

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Jose R. Alonso and colleagues describe technical advances that will allow the proposed IsoDAR (isotope decay at rest) cyclotron — being developed for neutrino physics research — to produce many medical isotopes more efficiently than existing cyclotrons can.

A wide variety of clinical isotopes can be produced using cyclotrons1, by bombarding other atoms with accelerated particles. Example isotopes include 19F used in fluorodeoxyglucose for positron emission tomography (PET) and 125I used for single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) studies. Each application has its own specific biology and chemistry; for each isotope, the beam energy, beam particle and target are also unique. Although the production of many radioisotopes is established, there are avenues for improvement. In particular, the much higher beam current, higher energy and flexibility of beam species puts the proposed IsoDAR (isotope decay at rest) cyclotron in a favourable position to produce important isotopes that are economically difficult to make at present.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jose R. Alonso, Janet M. Conrad & Loyd Hoyt Waites

  2. The University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

    Roger Barlow

Authors
  1. Jose R. Alonso
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  2. Roger Barlow
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  3. Janet M. Conrad
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  4. Loyd Hoyt Waites
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Correspondence to Jose R. Alonso.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Alonso, J.R., Barlow, R., Conrad, J.M. et al. Medical isotope production with the IsoDAR cyclotron. Nat Rev Phys 1, 533–535 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0095-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0095-6

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