F-18 production by means of 20Ne(d,4He) reaction at ININ

Fluor-18 is one of the most useful radioisotopes for positron emission tomography (PET), so the means to produce and process it turns out to be of great importance. In order to test the feasibility to produce this tracer in our laboratory at ININ, provided with an EN-tandem accelerator, we constructed a gas cell to contain a Ne gas target and bombard it with 6.5 MeV deuterons. In this work we report the production of some mCi of F-18 obtained through the 20Ne(d,4He)18F reaction, the experimental setup employed, with some practical implications related to the use of the alternative 18O(p,n)18F reaction.