Solid-phase extraction of 225Ac using ion-imprinted resin and 243Am as a radioactive tracer for internal dosimetry and incorporation measurements

Actinium-225 is a highly radiotoxic alpha-emitting radionuclide, which is currently in the spotlight owing to its promising radiotherapeutic applications in nuclear medicine. Personnel involved in the production and handling of actinium-225 is exposed to a risk of accidental incorporation of this radionuclide. Radiological protection regulations require regular monitoring of incorporation and internal dosimetry assessment for workers manipulating open radioactive sources. Urine is often used as a biological sample for measuring the incorporation of actinides, however it requires a radiochemical separation with a certified metrological tracer to enable quantitative determination. There is no stable, nor sufficiently long-lived radioactive isotopes of actinium to provide a metrological yield tracer. In this article, we propose an application of an ion-imprinted polymer resin to extract actinium-225 from urine employing americium-243 as a radioactive tracer. The radiochemical separation was followed by a quantitative determination with alpha-spectrometry. Solid-phase extraction of both actinides from urine using ion-imprinted polymer resin resulted in good radiochemical yields: 57.7 +/- 16.5% (n = 17) for actinium-225 and 62.8 +/- 18.0% (n = 17) for americium-243. Equivalent recoveries showed that americium-243 is a suitable yield tracer for the determination of actinium-225 with an ion-imprinted polymer resin. Combined with a different measurement technique, this method can be applied for the separation of other isotopes of actinium, such as actinium-227. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This article presents a method for extracting actinium-225 from urine using an ion-imprinted polymer resin and quantifying it with a radioactive tracer, americium-243. The results demonstrate good radiochemical yields for both actinium-225 and americium-243 using solid-phase extraction with the resin.