A Theoretical Study Of The Production Of Technetium-99m ( 99mtc) Using A Cyclotron

ABSTRACT

A theoretical study of the production of Technetium-99m (99mTc) using a cyclotron has been conducted. A nuclear reaction model code (Talys code) was used to generate reaction cross sections as functions of particle energies for 100Mo (p, 2n)99mTc reaction channel which would lead to the direct production of 99mTc. Excitation function for the desired reaction channel for the production of 99mTc and excitation functions for the reaction channels of competing products (contaminants) were plotted and analyzed. From the analysis, the optimum energy range for the production of 99mTc was obtained to be 10-20 MeV. This result compared favorably with experimental as well as theoretical works in literature. Using the radionuclide production yield equation (Celler et al, 2011), the saturated thick target radionuclide production yield in this work was estimated to be 565MBq/µAh. To investigate the effects of certain operational parameters on the saturated thick target yield of 99mTc, a numerical solution was obtained in this work for the saturated thick target radionuclide production yield equation by employing Newton‘s Forward Difference (NFD) formula and, concluding deductions made. The findings drawn from these theoretical considerations confirmed that a cyclotron production of 99mTc may be a feasible alternative to the reactor-based production.