Evaluation of radiochemical yield and quality in automated [¹⁸F]fluorocholine synthesis with a modified GE TracerLab MX module

[¹⁸F]fluorocholine ([¹⁸F]FCH) is an effective tracer for the imaging of different tumors of human brain, lung, or prostate. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the radiochemical yield and quality of routinely synthesized [¹⁸F]FCH by a modified 2-deoxy-2-[¹⁸F]fluoro-d-glucose ([¹⁸F]FDG) synthesizer (GE TracerLab MX). The radiosynthesis of [¹⁸F]FCH was completed in two steps taking 49 min. First, [¹⁸F]fluorobromomethane ([¹⁸F]FCH₂Br) was synthesized from [¹⁸F]fluoride and dibromethane. Then, [¹⁸F]FCH as bromide salt was produced by N-alkylation of N,N-dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE) with [¹⁸F]fluorobromomethane. [¹⁸F]FCH had > 99.99% radiochemical purity, with non-decay-corrected and decay-corrected yields of 12(± 3)% and 16(± 4)%, respectively (n = 8).