Deuteron-induced reactions generated by intense lasers for PET isotope production

✍ Scribed by Sachie Kimura; Aldo Bonasera

• Book ID: 103858545
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 297 KB
• Volume: 637
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0168-9002
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2011.02.043

✦ Synopsis

We investigate the feasibility of using laser accelerated protons/deuterons for positron emission tomography (PET) isotope production by means of the nuclear reactions 11 B(p, n) 11 C and 10 B(d, n) 11 C. The second reaction has a positive Q-value and no energy threshold. One can, therefore, make use of the lower energy part of the laser-generated deuterons, which includes the majority of the accelerated deuterons. By assuming that the deuteron spectra are similar to the proton spectra, the 11 C produced from the reaction 10 B(d, n) 11 C is estimated to be 7.4 Â 10 9 per laser-shot at the Titan laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Meanwhile a high-repetition table-top laser irradiation is estimated to generate 3.5 Â 10 7 11 C per shot from the same reaction. In terms of the 11 C activity, it is about 2 Â 10 4 Bq per shot. If this laser delivers kHz, the activity is integrated to 1 GBq after 3 min. The number is sufficient for the practical application in medical imaging for PET.