Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Radioactive isotopes are used in medicine for both treatment and diagnostic scans. The most common isotope used in diagnostic scans is Technetium-99m, used in approximately 85% of all nuclear medicine diagnostic scans worldwide. It is used for diagnoses involving a large range of body parts and diseases such as cancers and neurological problems ...
Several fluorescent molecules can be used simultaneously (given that they do not overlap, cf. FRET), whereas with radioactivity two isotopes can be used (tritium and a low energy isotope, e.g. 33 P due to different intensities) but require special equipment (a tritium screen and a regular phosphor-imaging screen, a specific dual channel ...
A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess numbers of either neutrons or protons, giving it excess nuclear energy, and making it unstable.
This is a list of radioactive nuclides (sometimes also called isotopes), ordered by half-life from shortest to longest, in seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Current methods make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10 −19 and 10 −10 seconds. [1]
Cobalt-60 tends to be used in teletherapy units as a higher photon energy alternative to caesium-137, while iridium-192 tends to be used in a different mode of therapy, internal radiotherapy or brachytherapy. The iridium wires for brachytherapy are a palladium-coated iridium/palladium alloy wire made radioactive by neutron activation.
Radiopharmaceuticals, or medicinal radiocompounds, are a group of pharmaceutical drugs containing radioactive isotopes. Radiopharmaceuticals can be used as diagnostic and therapeutic agents. Radiopharmaceuticals emit radiation themselves, which is different from contrast media which absorb or alter external electromagnetism or ultrasound.
The most commonly used radioisotope in PET, 18 F, is not produced in a nuclear reactor, but rather in a circular accelerator called a cyclotron. The cyclotron is used to accelerate protons to bombard the stable heavy isotope of oxygen 18 O. The 18 O constitutes about 0.20% of ordinary oxygen (mostly oxygen-16), from which it is extracted.
Radionuclides used in radiopharmaceuticals are mostly radioactive isotopes of elements with atomic numbers less than that of bismuth, that is, they are radioactive isotopes of elements that also have one or more stable isotopes. These may be roughly divided into two classes: