At the 11th edition of the ELI Summer School, PhD student Aymeric Tissot, part of the EUROPA project, presented his poster exploring laser-plasma acceleration (LPA) of electrons as an alternative approach to radioisotope production for cancer diagnosis and therapy.

With 4 million cancers diagnosed in the EU in 2020, demand for medical radioisotopes for cancer diagnosis and therapy is increasing, but reactors and accelerators that supply them are aging and under pressure. This is where LPA comes in: A laser pulse drives relativistic electrons, which strike a high-Z converter to generate bremsstrahlung photons that trigger photonuclear reactions in an irradiation target, producing radioisotopes. LPA offers compact, versatile setups with short acceleration distances, at the cost of lower average current and higher contaminant yields than conventional accelerators.

First, the method was experimentally validated for ⁴⁷Sc production at GSI. Building on this, Monte Carlo simulations of a ⁶⁸Ge/⁶⁸Ga generator to be produced at SCAPA predict 720 Bq activity at over 95% purity. The upcoming experimental campaign will target chemical separation: a key step that would mark major progress towards a viable LPA-based production route.