Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, October 16, 2023
Realizing and Disseminating the becquerel in Radionuclide Therapy: Standards and Traceability
Brian E. Zimmerman, PhD
Group Leader, Radioactivity Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Accurate measurements of radioactivity play a critical role in a wide variety of applications, including environmental monitoring, nuclear security, and nuclear medicine. As the National metrology institute for the United States, NIST is responsible for developing the tools needed to ensure that measurements can be traceable to the fundamental unit of radioactivity, the becquerel. This involves performing research to develop primary standards for radionuclide solutions, establishing methods for disseminating those standards, developing radiochemical techniques for analyzing radionuclides in natural matrices, conducting experiments to produce nuclear data and performing critical evaluations, and developing detectors and new measurement techniques. This talk will provide an overview of the activities of the NIST Radioactivity Group, focusing on nuclear medicine applications, and will provide insight into how fundamental realizations of the becquerel are made and transferred to end users in a way that maintains traceability to the International System of Units (SI).