What is the use of fluorine-18 in a PET scan?
In: Chemistry
PET (Positron Emission Topography) scans are watching for the results of a positron meeting and electron and shooting two gamma rays out in each direction.
Flourine-18 is handy because when it decays it releases a positron instead of an electron like most things and swaps one of its protons for a neutron to make it Oxygen-18.
When this emitted positron encounters an electron, they’ll merge and become pure energy which is generally in the form of a pair of gamma rays. By detecting these rays and determining where in your body they came from, they can see where the flourine-18 tracer went which tells them about blood flow and metabolic processes.
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