A radionuclide calibrator based on Cherenkov counting for activity measurements of high-energy pure beta-emitters

Abstract : Due to their stability and reproducibility, re-entrant pressurized ionization chambers (also called radionuclide calibrators) are widely used for activity measurements in nuclear medicine services as well as in national metrology institutes to maintain reference standards. Generally, these secondary instruments yield accurate activity measurements for gamma-emitting radionuclides. Ionization chambers are easy to use and thus well-adapted to guarantee the metrological traceability between national metrology institutes and end-users. However, the reproducibility of calibration factors can be significantly impaired when measuring high-energy pure beta-emitters such as radiopharmaceuticals based on 90Y. This is because the bremsstrahlung emission contributing to the instrument response is strongly dependent on the geometry of the components surrounding the radioactive solution. The present article describes a new design based on pulse counting to address this problem. It takes advantage of Cherenkov emission resulting from Compton scattering in transparent materials. The interest of Cherenkov counting is to obtain a low-sensitivity detector that enables direct measurements of high-activity solutions (at least up to 10 GBq for 90Y-microspheres in aqueous suspensions used in nuclear medicine). A simple design based on a geometry close to an ionization chamber used at LNHB (Vinten 671 type) is described. The feasibility in terms of detection efficiencies (lower than 10^-4for 90Y solutions) of the new radionuclide calibrator is investigated by Monte Carlo calculations using the Geant4 code.