Production of innovative radionuclides for therapy and diagnostics: nuclear data measurements and comparisons with TALYS code

International audienceNuclear medicine is a specialty that uses radioactive nuclei for therapy or diagnostic of diseases such as different types of cancer. The aim of this paper is to give the status of nuclear data collected for medical isotopes production and to present the large set of experimental data collected by the PRISMA team of the Subatech laboratory using the protons, deuterons and alpha particles delivered by the ARRONAX cyclotron from few MeV up to 70 MeV and covering a wide range of target masses. Using these data, we will also show that constrains can be put on simulation tools such as the TALYS code (version 1.9) and compare with TENDL-2015, the TALYS-based evaluated nuclear data library. A better overall agreement with our experimental data could be obtained with a different combination of models already included in the code. 1 Introduction Our research activities are focused on radionuclide production mainly for medical applications, either for therapy or diagnosis. This work is carried out in close collaboration with the GIP ARRONAX that possesses a high energy and high intensity multi-particle cyclotron [1]. In this frame, production cross sections and thick target yields were measured for alpha emitters, such as the U-230/Th-226, Th-227/Ra-223 and Ac-225/Bi-213 generators [2]; for photon, Tc-99m [2], and positon, Sc-44g [3], emitters for diagnosis; for electron emitters Re-186g [4], Tb-155 [5] and Sn-117m [6] for therapeutic applications. From the irradiated materials, new experimental production cross section data of interest for medical applications and monitor reactions have been extracted which allow to expand our knowledge on these excitation functions, to confirm the existing trends and to give additional values on a wider energy range. These experiments were conducted at the ARRONAX facility using the stacked-foil technique. This data set only represents a small part of the data needed in the field studying the production of innovative radionuclides for medical applications. In order to get answers quickly without the need of new experiments, it is interesting to use theoretical models. The TALYS code gather together several of such models for each step of a nuclear interaction. A systematic comparison of our results with the output of the TENDL-2015 nuclear data library and TALYS code (version 1.9) has been done. In this latter case, several combinations of models have been tested in order to better reproduce the available data