The 'Fidelis' radionuclide calibrator

Radionuclides calibrator services, including the provision of calibration factors for NPL 'Fidelis'.

Nuclear medicine relies on the accurate and reliable delivery of known activities of radiopharmaceuticals to patients if treatment is to be successful. For hospital nuclear medicine departments where the radionuclide calibrator is the preferred choice of measuring system, NPL provides a calibration service to ensure radioactivity measurements are traceable to national standards as recommended in Measurement Good Practice Guide 93: Protocol for establishing and maintaining the calibration of medical radionuclide calibrators and their quality control.

Details of service

A service is available for the radioassay of hospitals' sources in NPL's secondary standard ionisation chamber. Comparison of the certificated results with measurements performed in the hospital's calibrator confirms the performance of the hospital's instrument. NPL's flexible service allows for source calibrations on demand throughout the year and meets the economic needs of hospitals budgets. A range of radionuclides can be measured (including ^99mTc, ²⁰¹Tl, ¹²³I, ⁶⁴Cu, ⁵¹Cr, ¹⁸F, ⁸⁹Sr, ¹¹¹In, ³²P, ⁹⁰Y and ¹⁷⁷Lu among others, as well as ¹³¹I solutions/capsules, ¹²⁵I brachytherapy seeds/strands, etc.). Various container types and geometries can be used (e.g. P6 and 10R Schott vials). This service will be expanded in 2012 with the addition of measurement capabilities for the emerging nuclides ²²³Ra and ²²⁷Th.

NPL also provides extensive lists of calibration factors for the NPL secondary standard radionuclide calibrator 'Fidelis', which is a commercially available copy of the NPL master ionisation chamber with a user-friendly PC-based current measurement module provided by Southern Scientific Ltd. This system provides a direct link to the UK primary standards of radioactivity for a wide range of beta and gamma emitting radionuclides.

Download price list for secondary standardisation of customer supplied samples service

Contact

Customer Service tel: +44 20 8943 8695
E-mail: radioactivity_enquiries@npl.co.uk