Description
Horia Hulubei National Institute for R&D in Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), one of the biggest research institutes in Romania, owns one of the most reliable and advanced particle accelerators in Europe. This equipment and a radio-chemistry facility are part of the Radio-pharmaceutical Research Center at IFIN-HH, Magurele. The TR19 cyclotron can produce very stable proton beams with energy ranging 14 MeV to 19 MeV and is used to produce different medical radioisotopes such as: 18F, 64Cu, 89Zr, 99m Tc. The maximum proton beam current of 300 microA can be focused on different targets with minimum beam losses and with high precision using different water-cooled collimators. The cyclotron is equipped with two target selectors having the possibility to install four different targets on each of them. Attached to the cyclotron we use a six meters long beam line equipped with three powerful quadrupoles that ensures the optimal beam optics and transport. From January 2018, the Cyclotron Research Group started to develop new ways to operate the cyclotron in order to extract, scatter and focus proton currents in extreme conditions: very small proton currents through different transport systems. There were proton beams obtained with currents between tens of picoA and 100 femptoA used for radiobiology experiments with promising results. Using a COMECER Solid Target Station the 64Cu production was tested with good results related to production yields and beam alignment to the target- there were paper burn tests performed. We will also present a new equipment for production of new radioisotopes used in nuclear medicine: a neutron activator in line with the cyclotron. Preliminary results were obtained and will be presented.
This work was partially supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, IFIN-HH DFNA PN project and 48UB/2023 project, University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics
Keywords: radioisotope, cyclotron, nuclear medicine, neutron activator.
| Scientific Topic 7 | Medical and industrial accelerators |
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