The goal of the proposed research is to provide the nuclear medicine community with a compact linear accelerator (linac) for the production of the principal short-lived radioisotopes used in positron emission tomography. The design of this linac will be based on exciting new technologies developed for a pion-generating linac (PIGMI) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and funded by the National Cancer Institute. These concepts will be combined with a revolutionary new commercial radio frequency power source to provide a clinically based linac which will be more practical and economical than a compact cyclotron. The end-point of the Phase I study will be a fully engineered design for a Phase II prototype, complete with established operating parameters and operating costs. The Phase I design study will take advantage of Los Alamos' stated technology transfer policy to utilize the many advances made by the PIGMI program. Specifically, the various accelerator design computer codes developed at Los Alamos will be used to optimize the PIGMI linac design parameters for the present application. All final system components will be fully documented in detailed drawings and a cost analysis for commercial production of the system will be provided.
