Positron emitters

Potassium-40 (K) is a long lived and the main naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium, with a half-life of 1.248 billion years. It makes up about 117 of natural potassium, making that mixture very weakly radioactive; the short life means this was significantly larger earlier in Earth's history.

Fluorine-18 (18F, also called radiofluorine) is a fluorine radioisotope which is an important source of positrons. Its half-life is 109.734 minutes, less than two hours, and one of the shortest of radioisotopes with use outside research. It decays by positron emission 96.7% of the time and electron capture 3.3% of the time. Both modes of decay yield stable oxygen-18.

Aluminium-26 (26Al, Al-26) is a radioactive isotope of the chemical element aluminium, decaying by either positron emission or electron capture to stable magnesium-26. The half-life of 26Al is 717,000 years. This is far too short for the isotope to survive as a primordial nuclide, but a small amount of it is produced by collisions of atoms with cosmic ray protons.

REDIRECT Isotopes of carbon#Carbon-11

Copper-64 (Cu) is a positron and beta emitting isotope of copper (exhibiting both forms of beta decay), with applications in molecular radiotherapy and positron emission tomography. Its unusually long half-life (12.7 hours) for a positron-emitting isotope makes it increasingly useful when attached to various ligands for PET and PET-CT scanning.

REDIRECT Isotopes of sodium#Sodium-22

Rubidium-82 (82Rb) is a radioactive isotope of rubidium. 82Rb is widely used in myocardial perfusion imaging. This isotope undergoes rapid uptake by myocardiocytes, which makes it a valuable tool for identifying myocardial ischemia in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging. 82Rb is used in the pharmaceutical industry and is marketed as rubidium-82 chloride under the trade names RUBY-FILL and CardioGen-82.

REDIRECT Isotopes of gallium#Gallium-68

REDIRECT Isotopes of oxygen#Oxygen-15