Measurements of (186)Re production cross section induced by deuterons on (nat)W target at ARRONAX facility

Introduction: The ARRONAX cyclotron, acronym for "Accelerator for Research in Radiochemistry and Oncology at Nantes Atlantique" is a new facility installed in Nantes, France. A dedicated program has been launched on production of innovative radioisotopes for PET imaging and for β- and α targeted radiotherapy using protons or α particles. Since the accelerator is also able to deliver deuteron beams up to 35 MeV, we have reconsidered the possibility of using them to produce medical isotopes. Indeed, in some cases, the use of deuterons allows higher production yield than protons.

Methods: (186)Re is a β- emitter which has chemical properties close to the widely used (99m)Tc and has been used in clinical trials for palliation of painful bone metastases resulting from prostate and breast cancer. (186)Re production cross section has been measured between 9 and 23 MeV using the ARRONAX deuteron beam and the stacked-foil technique. A novelty in our work is the use of a monitor foil behind each (nat)W target foil in order to record efficiently the deuteron incident flux and energies all over the stack relying on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommended cross section of the (nat)Ti(d,x)(48)V reaction. Since a good optimization process is supposed to find the best compromise between production yield and purity of the final product, isotope of interest and contaminants created during irradiation are measured using gamma spectrometry.

Results: Our new sets of data are presented and compared with the existing ones and with results given by the TALYS code calculations. The thick target yield (TTY) has been calculated after the fit of our experimental values and compared with the IAEA recommended ones.

Conclusions: Presented values are in good agreement with existing data. The deuteron production route is clearly the best choice with a TTY of 7.8 MB/μAh at 30 MeV compared to 2.4 MBq/μAh for proton as projectile at the same energy. The TALYS code gives satisfactory results for (183,186)Re isotopes.