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Description
Single photon emission computed tomography is a medical diagnostic tool mainly used for cancer surveys. An image of the diseased part can be acquired using 141-keV gamma rays emitted from Tc-99m. Tc-99m has a half-life of 6 h and is the decay product of Mo-99. For long term sustainable production of Mo-99, the accelerator based system seems to be very promising.
The compact energy recovery linac (cERL) is a superconducting continuous wave electron accelerator. For Mo-99 production experiment, the maximum beam energy is 21 MeV and averaged beam current 10 μA limited by the radiation safety of the present facility configuration. The construction of the new beamline with the target system began in July 2018 and finished in March 2019. By Mo-99 production experiments at cERL, the spatial distribution of bremsstrahlung and the energy dependence of the yield in the target were precisely acquired. From generated Mo-99, Chiyoda Technol Corporation (CTC) successfully extracted Tc-99m at the RI Lab in KEK using both the alumina column generator method and solvent extraction method. By both methods, pure Tc-99m can be successfully extracted. Prototype facility model for the mass commercial production was already designed and the funding and construction will be the next step.
The beamline and target system are supported by Accelerator Inc. The research is a joint project with the CTC and FFTC (Fuji Film Toyama Chemical).
