A real-time positron monitor for the estimation of stack effluent releases from PET medical cyclotron facilities.

摘要

Large activities of short-lived positron emitting radiopharmaceuticals are routinely manufactured by modern Medical Cyclotron facilities for positron emission tomography (PET) applications. During radiochemical processing, a substantial fraction of the volatile positron emitting radiopharmaceuticals are released into the atmosphere. An inexpensive, fast response positron detector using a simple positron-annihilation chamber has been developed for real-time assessment of the stack release of positron emitting effluents at the Australian National Medical Cyclotron. The positron detector was calibrated by using a 3.0ml (1.50MBq) aliquot of 18FDG and interfaced to an industrial standard datalogger for the real-time acquisition of stack release data.