Abstract
The use of short-lived radionuclides has grown considerably, because larger dosages of these radionuclides can be administered to the patient with only minimal radiation dose and produce excellent image quality. This increasing appreciation of short-lived radionuclides has led to the development of radionuclide generators that serve as convenient sources of their production. A generator is constructed on the principle of the decay–growth relationship between a long-lived parent radionuclide and its short-lived daughter radionuclide. The chemical property of the daughter nuclide must be distinctly different from that of the parent nuclide so that the former can be readily separated. In a generator, basically a long-lived parent nuclide is allowed to decay to its short-lived daughter nuclide and the latter is then chemically separated. The importance of radionuclide generators lies in the fact that they are easily transportable and serve as sources of short-lived radionuclides in institutions far from the site of a cyclotron or reactor facility.
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Saha, G.B. (2010). Radionuclide Generators. In: Fundamentals of Nuclear Pharmacy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5860-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5860-0_5
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