Prediction of the correct measured activity of 186Re and 188Re from reactor produced natural rhenium using an artificial neural network

To optimize the cost effectiveness of 186Re and 188Re production, which have recently been used as radio pharmaceuticals for therapeutic purposes, we designed an artificial neural network (ANN) to evaluate the activity of combined 186Re + 188Re. One of the production ways is the (n,γ) reaction of natural rhenium which leads to combined 186Re + 188Re. Using the counted activity of 186Re + 188Re mixtures by a well type isotope calibrator, the precise activity of 186Re and 188Re is obtained by the ANN. A back-propagation ANN was trained using 30 activities of mixed 186Re + 188Re. The performance of the ANN was tested by Early-Stopping validation method, and the ANN was optimized with respect to its architecture. The response of the ANN shows significant precision that may be used for medical application of 186Re + 188Re mixtures.