Its hard to imagine a scientific paper that becomes a best-seller -- what can an academic and fact-based article ever offer that would compete with the drama of newspaper headlines or the lurid covers of modern fiction? Well, UBC professor Anna Celler, together with team members from TRIUMF (Tom Ruth) and the BC Cancer Agency (Francois Benard), has just offered an example.
Published in the September 2011 issue of Physics in Medicine and Biology, Dr. Celler explores theoretical models for predicting yields from proton-induced reactions on targets of natural and enriched molybdenum. The 17-page article was selected for a feature in the journal because of its quality and perceived broad appeal. The article uses state-of-the-art models of complex networks of nuclear-physics interactions to predict the overall yields of different isotopes when, for instance, a molybdenum target is irradiated in a small medical cyclotron with a beam of protons. The paper identifies the optimal mixture of molybdenum isotopes in the target and the best irradation energy to use in order to produce technetium-99m, the world's most popular medical isotope. This detailed analysis arose from the a collaboration with TRIUMF's CycloTec99 group that is overseeing the development of technetium-99m on multiple cyclotrons.
Since its online publication, the article has been downloaded 500 times from the journal's website! To put this into context, across all IOP journals, only 3% of articles were accessed over 500 times this year.
Dr. Celler is head of the Medical Imaging Research Group (MIRG) at UBC. Started in 1991, MIRG is a team of physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists working in collaboration with medical staff to provide scientific support for clinical imaging and to develop new imaging techniques. They are affiliated with the Departments of Radiology and of Physics and Astronomy at UBC as well as the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.
Congratulations to Dr. Celler and her co-authors!
To read it for yourself, please visit http://stacks.iop.org/0031-9155/56/5469.
-- by T.I. Meyer, TRIUMF's Head of Strategic Planning and Communications