Investigation of direct production of 62Cu radioisotope at low energy multiparticle accelerator for PET studies

There is a need for 62Cu PET radioisotope also in those laboratories where its generator (62Zn [T1/2=9.2 h]→62Cu) are not available commercially and the 62Zn cannot be produced directly. The 62Cu radionuclide is used mainly to label agents to quantify both blood flow and hypoxia. In the past only one group has studied a direct production way of 62Cu. According to their results, this method resulted in very high production yield. Unfortunately this method requires highly enriched target material (62Ni). The cost of the enriched target, the necessity of the recovery of the target material after the production, and the material loss during the irradiation/separation/recovery steps is a major disadvantage of this production way. To avoid the use of the highly enriched nickel target and the recovery problem, we have decided to investigate other production method(s) that do not employ enriched targets. Our candidate is the 59Co(α,n) reaction for in-house production of 62Cu