Securing Mo-99 Supply

Dr. Valeria Starovoitova
Idaho Acelerator Facility

Recently there has been a phenomenal growth in medical using of different radioisotopes. However, Tc-99m remains the most popular. medical radioisotope. Approximately 80% of all the world’s nuclear medicine procedures are carried out using Tc-99m, mostly in diagnostics of heart conditions and cancer. Over the last several years there have been a number of supply shortages of Mo-99, Tc-99m parent. These shortages affected millions of people, forcing clinicians to use other techniques. Numerous proposals were made to secure Mo-99 supply and avoid such shortages in future. This presentation will summarize the most promising and interesting ones.