Assessment of dose increase after administration of radiopharmaceuticals prepared with cyclotron-produced ^99mTc

Technetium-99m (^99mTc) is currently available from ⁹⁹Mo/^99mTc generators as the β-decay product of ⁹⁹Mo (T½=66 h). Nowadays, ⁹⁹Mo is mostly obtained as a fission product in nuclear reactors by neutron-induced reactions on highly enriched uranium. Alternative production routes, such as direct production of ^99mTc via ¹⁰⁰Mo(p,2n)^99mTc reaction using medical cyclotrons has the potential to be both reliable and relatively cost effective. However, results showed that the extracted ^99mTc from the proton-bombarded ¹⁰⁰Mo-enriched target contains small quantities of several Tc radioisotopes (^93mTc, ⁹³Tc, ⁹⁴Tc, ^94mTc, ⁹⁵Tc, ^95mTc, ⁹⁶Tc and ^97mTc). The aim of this work was to estimate the dose increase (DI) due to the contribution of Tc radioisotopes generated as impurities, after the intravenous injection of four radiopharmaceuticals prepared with cyclotron produced ^99mTc (CP-^99mTc) using 99.05% ¹⁰⁰Mo-enriched metallic targets.