Development of a Tritium AMS Detection Method for Biomedical Applications

There are numerous applications for tritium (3H) as a tracer isotope in biomedicine commonly combined with the liquid scintillation counting method. The use of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a rather new detection method, would enlarge and open new possibilities for tritium applications in biomedicine, especially when sample volumes are small. The tritium in the samples has to be transformed to solid form yielding high output of negative hydrogen current. The sample preparation for tritiated water is done in two steps: firstly extracting water from the biological sample and secondly, extracting hydrogen/tritium from the water and forming a chemically suitable compound for the AMS system.
In this paper a chemical procedure for the sample preparation is described. The results of the first measurements of tritiated water with known activity using AMS detection technique will also be presented.