Robots in the radiopharmaceutical laboratory...will they replace the chemist?

Under the premise that Positron Emission Tomography (PET) will become a routine imaging modality in the near future, the synthesis of the required short-lived tracers will need to be performed by some type of automated device in order to reduce radiation dose to personal. Among these devices, the use of laboratory robotics offers a flexibility and versatility unmatched by other methods: changes in a specific radiochemical synthesis or the incorporation of new ones are readily accomplished with software manipulation without modifications to the apparatus. While the effectiveness of such a device could render the chemist obsolete in the production of compounds for PET at some facilities, a trained chemist possesses the intuition necessary to program the robot efficiently and to correct any problems with the automated synthesis that software alone couldn't solve