Neutron reduction of the small cyclotron for production of oxygen-15-labeled gases

Abstract Oxygen-15 can be roduced using a relatively small cyclotron emitting a deuteron beam with the approximate energy of 3 MeV. However, the neutron emission from the cyclotron itself requires a large scale of shield, causing the total size of the system difficult to be placed at clinical department. We have evaluated a novel idea to reduce the neutron roduction from the cyclotron to a negligible level, and examined if it is applicable to a clinical environment. Systematic physics experiments were carried out using a Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator to validate the feasibility of our approach, in which the neutron production was assessed for realistic energy ranges of deuteron. It was shown that neutron production was reduced dramatically by a factor of 10 to the fourth using our approach, whilst enough amount of oxygen-15 was roduced. This study suggested that a small oxygen-15 generator is possible which could be laced next to existing clinical PET cameras.