Naturally-occurring radioisotopes generally have long half lives and belong to relatively heavy elements - and are therefore unsuitable for medical diagnostic applications;
Medical diagnostic radioisotopes are generally produced artificially;
The fission process can be exploited so that radioisotopes of interest can be separated chemically from fission products;
A cyclotron can be used to accelerate charged particles up to high energies so that they to collide into a target of the material to be activated;
A radioisotope generator is generally used in hospitals to produce short-lived radioisotopes;
A technetium-99m generator consists of an alumina column containing Mo-99, which decays into Tc-99m;
Saline is passed through the generator to elute the Tc-99m - the resulting solution is called sodium pertechnetate;
Both positive pressure and negative pressure generators are in use;
An isotope calibrator is needed when a Tc-99m generator is used in order to determine the activity for preparation of patient doses and to test whether any Mo-99 is present in the collected solution.
