Performance evaluation of the first hospital cyclotron installed in masih Daneshvari hospital for production of positron emitter radioisotopes

It is well known that the acceptance tests should be done when a cyclotron installed in order to measure the performance claimed by manufacturer. As well as the photon and neutron dose rate during the production of flourin-18 and nitrogen-13 in self shield cyclotron in Masih Daneshvari hospital have been measured as function of distance and beam current. The first Self-shield hospital cyclotron (GE PET Trace 700) has been installed in Masih Daneshvari hospital in 2012. The yield performance of 2858.32, 138.15 and 1047.5 mCi has been measured for 18F–, 13N-13NH3 and 11C-11CO2 respectively. In flourin-18 target, the neutron dose rate observed 13.8 µSv/h at 35 µA target current at the distance of 1 m of near to the target support cabinet. With increasing of distance from 0.5 to 2.5 m near the cyclotron doors at 35 µA target current, the gamma dose rate decreases from 8.6 to 2 µSv/h in nitrogen-13 target. The measured yield for all tracers was higher than the value reported by manufacturer and the amount of shielding in GE PET Trace 700 is enough to have safe dose rate during production.