Isotopes of gallium


Natural gallium consists of a mixture of two stable isotopes: gallium-69 and gallium-71. The most commercially important radioisotopes are gallium-67 and gallium-68.
Gallium-67 is a gamma-emitting isotope used in standard nuclear medical imaging, in procedures usually referred to as gallium scans. It is usually used as the free ion, Ga3+. It is the longest-lived radioisotope of gallium.
The shorter-lived gallium-68 is a positron-emitting isotope generated in very small quantities from germanium-68 in gallium-68 generators or in much greater quantities by proton bombardment of 68Zn in low-energy medical cyclotrons, for use in a small minority of diagnostic PET scans. For this use, it is usually attached as a tracer to a carrier molecule, which gives the resulting radiopharmaceutical a different tissue-uptake specificity from the ionic 67Ga radioisotope normally used in standard gallium scans.

List of isotopes

Gallium-68