Fluorine-18 (18F) (18F)

Fluorine-18 is a radioactive isotope of fluorine and the most widely utilized positron emitter in clinical Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging (StatPearls). It possesses a physical half-life of approximately 109.7 minutes, which is long enough to allow for complex multi-step radiochemical syntheses and transport to imaging centers, yet short enough to limit the radiation dose to the patient (PubChem). Fluorine-18 is not a therapeutic target; rather, it is a diagnostic radionuclide that is covalently bonded to various targeting ligands or metabolic substrates to create radiopharmaceuticals (NIH). The most prominent example is Fludeoxyglucose (18F), used to visualize glucose metabolism in oncology, neurology, and cardiology (NCI). When the isotope decays, it emits a positron that annihilates with an electron, producing gamma rays that allow for the precise localization of the tracer within the body, facilitating the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's (Wikipedia).

Other names

F-1818FFluorine-18 radioisotopeRadiofluorine18F-fluoride

Fluorine-18 decays via positron emission (beta plus decay), where a proton is converted into a neutron, emitting a positron and a neutrino (Wikipedia). The emitted positron subsequently undergoes annihilation with a nearby electron, producing two 511 keV gamma photons emitted approximately 180 degrees apart, which are detected by Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners to reconstruct three-dimensional images of tracer distribution (StatPearls).