PET Tracers for Clinical Imaging of Breast Cancer

Table 1

Nuclear characteristics of different selected positron emitters of interest in PET imaging. The maximum positron energy is related to the maximum theoretical resolution using this radionuclide, in such a way that the smaller the positron emission energy, the better the resolution than can be achieved. The branching ratio refers to the approximate number of decay events in which a positron is emitted (this value is 100% for pure positron emitters).

Isotope	Half life	Maximum positron energy (MeV)	Branching ratio (%)
Carbon-11	20 min	0.96	~100
Fluorine-18	110 min	0.63	~100
Copper-64	12.7 h	0.58	~19
Gallium-68	68 min	1.89	~88
Bromine-76	16.2 h	3.94	~100
Zirconium-89	3.26 days	0.89	~23
Iodine-124	4.2 days	2.135	~23