A design for automatic preparation of highly concentrated 188Re-perrhenate solutions

Rhenium-188 is extremely suitable for the radiotherapy of balloon dilation for the coronary artery restenosis. To satisfy the need of highly concentrated 188Re-perrhenate for the clinical applications, we designed an apparatus to achieve the purpose of concentrating 188Re-perrhenate solution. This apparatus comprised of a concentrator, a control box and a computer with an automatic control program. A column of cation-exchange resin in Ag+ form and an anion-exchange column in series were used in the concentration procedure. More than 90% of 188Re isotope in the original solution could be collected with 1 mL of 0.9% NaCl solution added to collect the 188Re adsorbed in the column in this final process (90.7±2.2%, n=15). We also found that the radiochemical purity in the final solution remained unchanged (100%). The designed process could automatically increase the quality and efficiency of the production of highly concentrated rhenium-188 solution, and could also reduce the radiation dose absorbed by the operator.