Gallium-67
An older radioactive gallium tracer, given as a citrate injection, that lights up infections and some tumours over a scan taken a few days later; mostly replaced now by FDG PET but still used where PET is unavailable.
Overview
Gallium-67 decays by electron capture with a 3.26-day (78.3-hour) half-life, emitting a set of gamma rays (93, 185 and 300 keV) suited to planar gamma-camera and SPECT imaging. Complexed with citrate as 67Ga-citrate, it accumulates in inflammatory and infectious foci and in a range of tumours, historically including lymphoma, hepatoma and bronchogenic carcinoma, and was for decades the standard whole-body tumour and infection imaging agent before FDG PET became widely available.
It is produced on a cyclotron by proton bombardment of enriched zinc-68, the 68Zn(p,2n)67Ga reaction, and its multi-day half-life means imaging is typically performed 24-72 hours after injection to let background activity clear, at the cost of a comparatively high radiation burden and lower image resolution than modern PET agents.
Clinical use of 67Ga-citrate has declined sharply since the 2000s as FDG-PET/CT displaced it for lymphoma and most solid-tumour indications, and it now survives mainly as a second-line option for infection and inflammation imaging where PET access, FDG production or reimbursement pose barriers.
- γ 93 keV (38%)
- γ 185 keV (21%)
- γ 300 keV (17%)
One of the oldest cancer-imaging scans still on the market: an injectable form of radioactive gallium that collects in lymphomas and some other tumours (and in infections), imaged one to five days later. It has mostly been replaced by FDG-PET but is still FDA-approved and occasionally used.
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