Technetium Generators: Status and Prospects

Abstract

The technetium-99m generator has experienced many improvements and changes since it was introduced to nuclear medicine in the late 1950 s. In the industrialized countries of the world, the. most common form in use today is the chromatographic generator, based on fission molybdenum-99. This presents significant problems to the less industrialized countries and to overcome these much research is under way searching for viable alternatives. Improvements have been made to techniques for generating technetium-99m by MEK extraction and sublimation. A new technology, based on the separation of technetium-99m from an insoluble gel containing (η,γ) molybdenum-99, introduces exciting prospects which promise all the advantages currently enjoyed only by the fission-molybdenum-99 generator without any of the concomitant problems of complex processing, pollution and the need to dispose of high activity wastes. The paper addresses a number of these developments which are seen as signposts to the future.

Performance characteristics of biodistribution of 99mTc-cefprozil for in vivo infection imaging

“…A single clinical isolation of Staphylococcus aureus (Boyd 1986) from biological samples was used to produce focal infection. Individual colonies were diluted in order to obtain turbid suspension.…”

Novel radiochemical and biological characterization of 99mTc-histamine as a model for brain imaging

“…The reaction mixture was vigorously shaken and allowed to react at room temperature for sufficient time to complete the reaction (Boyd 1986). The proposed structure of the Tc-histamine complex coordinated as a Tc (V) oxocore, leading to complexes in which a TcO 3+ core exists (Jurisson et al 1986;Abrams et al 1991).…”

Labeling of tannic acid with technetium-99m for diagnosis of stomach ulcer

“…The experiment was repeated with all factors kept at optimum changing except the factor under study, till the optimal conditions are achieved [24].…”