A tool for balancing activity from isotopes used for the radioactive microsphere method

The radioactive microsphere method for determination of regional organ blood flow is widely used in experimental studies. The measurement error of this method in part depends on balanced activities from the set of nuclides used. Achieving even distribution of half-life corrected activity is tedious due to the many calculations needed and is limited by minimal and maximal allowable amounts of microspheres per injection. In two experiments we showed that incorrect planning of microspheres numbers can lead to invalidation of results. Therefore, we developed a program that allows optimization of half-life corrected activities and tested it on an experimental series of 16 dogs. Despite large discrepancies of specific activities of nuclides, storage times and half-lives, balancing activities with the program succeeded: on the average, the accumulated gamma spectra consisted of 22.3 +/- 6.9 85Sr, 18.9 +/- 6.8 141Ce, 10.7 +/- 6.2 51Cr, 23.9 +/- 6.7 95Nb, 16.9 +/- 7.2 46Sc, and 7.3 +/- 2.7% 114mIn radiation, respectively.