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 non-standard positron emitters (e.g. 64Cu, 86Y, 124I, 73Se) and novel therapeutic radionuclides emitting low-range β- particles (e. g. 67Cu, 186Re), conversion or Auger electrons (e.g. 117mSn, 77Br) and α-particles (e.g. 225Ac). A brief account of various aspects of development work (i.e. nuclear data, targetry, chemical processing, 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