ABSTRACT
Since the discovery of artificial radioactivity a half century ago, radiotracers, radionuclides, and radionuclide compounds have played a vital role in biology and medicine. Common to all is radionuclide (radioactive isotope) production. This section describes the basic ideas involved in radionuclide production and gives examples of the applications of radionuclides. The field of radiopharmaceutical chemistry has fallen into subspecialties of positron-emission tomography (PET) chemistry and general radiopharmaceutical chemistry, including specialists in technetium chemistry, taking advantage of the imaging attributes of technetium-99m.
