Second-hand cyclotron boosts PET scan centre
10 Mar 2004
The University of Birmingham has become the home for the first centre in the world to combine a cyclotron with a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner for industrial, rather than medical, applications.
The centre's cyclotron was bought from a hospital in Minneapolis with the aid of a £550 000 grant from the EPSRC. It is being used to generate radioactive tracers for the scanner, which can be injected into flowing liquids and gases inside mixers, reactors, engines and other machinery.
The cyclotron accelerates sub-atomic particles to bombard tracer molecules, converting them into radioactive isotopes. The centre's PET scanner detects and follows these tracers as they move through the equipment, providing insights into how materials behave as they are processed.
Food and pharmaceutical manufacturers are likely to seek the services of the Positron Imaging Centre, according to Professor Jonathan Saville, head of Birmingham's chemical engineering department. 'Scientists have to think about the way in which taste chemicals in foodstuffs are released and perceived, or how an active chemical of a drug is released into the body,' he says.
'To produce these materials efficiently requires combined understanding of their chemistry, processing and materials science and the cyclotron, in combination with the PET scanner, will allow us to do this.'
