Facilitating the design and operation of radiochemistry autosynthesizers

Both research and routine medical applications of positron emission tomography critically depend on rapid and reliable radiopharmaceutical syntheses. This work describes new computer techniques for controlling automated synthesizers, which feature: a graphical interface for easy operation, software reconfiguration without reprogramming to accommodate changes in chemistry, and both remote and unattended control modes. These concepts were implemented in a simple yet powerful program, PREPARE, which controls a commercially-built radiochemistry synthesizer, and in a fully-functional simulation, AUTOMATE, which explores synthesizer multitasking given a single PC. Unlike most black box and robotic approaches to radiochemistry synthesis which are highly chemistry- and hardware-specific, PREPARE and AUTOMATE have been designed as generic programs, supporting a palette of basic devices (valves, stepper motors, etc.)