Concentration of medically interesting 99mTc-pertechnetate for diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals

Technetium-99m ( 99mtc) has ideal physical properties for a lot of applications in nuclear medicine and therefore it is still the budding radionuclide of choice. the concentration of 99mtc is dependent upon the specific activity of molybdenum-99 (99mo). because of the high content of inactive molybdenum in neutron irradiated moo3,large columns containing large adsorbent such as aluminum oxide or gel are needed to set up (n,.) based 99mo. 99mtc chromatographic generator. the result is large elution volumes containing relatively high 99mo contents and low concentrations of 99mtc. this decrease in radioactive concentration or specific volume of 99mtc confines the clinical procedures such as 99mtc- hmpao ( 99mtc-hexa methyl propylene amine oxime) for brain imaging,99mtc-dtpa ( 99mtc-diethylene triamine penta acetic acid) for lung ventilation,99mtc-mibi ( 99mtcmethoxyisobutyl isonitrile) and 99mtc-tetrafosmin for myocardial perfusion studies. we report post elution concentration of 99mtc using lead cation exchange and tiny alumina column. using these columns high bolus volumes (10-60 ml saline) of 99mtc can easily be concentrated in 1 ml of isotonic saline. this approach also works very successfully to prepare high specific volume solutions of 99mtc-pertechnetate for diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals.