Dirk Bender, April 2016

Oxygen-15 has a short half-life of about two minutes. This short half-life is a limiting factor for the use of this isotope in PET imaging. Therefore, applications of O-15 are normally limited to simple molecules such as O-15 water, O-15 oxygen and O-15 carbon monoxide. More complicated molecules such as O-15 deoxyglucose were labelled using sophisticated borane chemistry, but never exceeded the proof of principle stage. O-15 water is often used for blood flow measurements in various organs, O-15 oxygen for oxygen consumption measurements and O-15 carbon monoxide for blood volume determination.  These three O-15 labelled compounds are available routinely for both studies in humans and in  pre-clinical use.

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