Quality assurance of iodine-124 produced via the nuclear reaction Te-124(d,2n)I-124

For more than a year, I-124 (T = 4.15 d) has been produced routinely with a compact cyclotron by irradiation of (TeO2)-Te-124 with 14 MeV deuterons, followed by dry distillation of the iodine radioisotopes formed from irradiated target materials. The following by-products have been measured and compiled in each charge: 13.2-d I-123, 60-d I-125, 13.0-d I-126, 12.4-h I-130 and 8.02-d I-131. The data show that after 45 h decay time, the sum of the activities of these nuclides is less than 5% of the I-124 activity. Observation of this limit has been required by the Swiss Regulatory Agencies for a PET Study of cell proliferation in human brain tumors using [I-124] IUdR.