Methods of increasing the performance of radionuclide generators used in nuclear medicine radiotherapy and SPECT/PET imaging were developed and detailed for 99Mo/99mTc and 68Ge/68Ga radionuclide generators as the cases. Optimisation methods of the daughter nuclide build-up versus stand-by time and/or specific activity using mean progress functions were developed for increasing the performance o...

Recent shortages of molybdenum-99 ((99)Mo) have led to an examination of alternate production methods that could contribute to a more robust supply. An electron accelerator and the photoneutron reaction were used to produce (99)Mo from which technetium-99m ((99m)Tc) is extracted. SPECT images of rat anatomy obtained using the accelerator-produced (99m)Tc with those obtained using (99m)Tc from a...

Threatens Patient Care I n what members of the nuclear medicine community referred to as a ‘‘devastating’’ and ‘‘catastrophic’’ series of events, the Canadian supplier of more than 50% of the world’s marketed radioisotopes shut down its reactor in late November. The result was an immediate shortage of 99mTc generators that forced a scramble for alternative suppliers and drastic reductions in th...

The nuclear medicine literature is rich with reports of both normal and abnormal accumulation of bone imaging agents (99m Tc-HDP, MDP or PYP) in extra-skeletal structures. The cases published in this issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology are excellent examples of this phenomenon. Extraskeletal uptake is usually an incidental finding on the bone scan, although the bone scan occasio...