Investigation of 44ti (N, P) and44 Ti (D, 2p) Reactions in the Production of 44sc for Theranostic Applications

Sustainable use of nuclear medicine procedures for diagnosis and therapy of complex anomalies will continue to rely on the emergence of more radionuclides in the quest to achieve higher efficacy, higher image resolution or more efficient therapy – one of such radionuclides is Scandium-44, a positron emitter that holds the potential to propel the theranostics approach to higher levels. This paper investigates the 44Ti (n,p) and 44Ti (d-2p) reactions for the production of 44Sc using GEANT4, a C++ MC based simulation toolkit with a view to identify the more efficient route in terms of incident energy production cross sections The findings show that (n,p) reactions generated higher cross sections at threshold which declines with rising neutron energy. The (d,2p) reaction despite exhibiting lower cross sections also dispose a number of isomeric states posing challenge to optimization. Excitation functions of both reactions showed good agreement with both evaluated (ENDF) and experimental EXFOR datasets. As 44Sc (t1/2 = 4 h) is used for PET, and matched with 47Sc (t1/2 = 3.5 d) for theranostics approach, its ability to replace Gallium (t1/2 = 68 min) makes it possible to take the radionuclide to distant PET centers in addition to its use in planning and monitoring targeted radionuclide therapy of some radionuclides.