A better way to add radioactive fluorine

Making compounds that contain the useful radioisotope fluorine-18 (¹⁸F) could be much easier in future, say researchers in the UK and Finland. The team integrated the isotope into a popular fluorinating agent called Selectfluor, which opens up a wide range of chemistry to build useful radiolabelled molecules. 

¹⁸F has a half-life of around 2 hours and releases positrons as it decays, making it perfect as a radiotracer in positron emission tomography (PET). This type of medical imaging is increasingly popular for disease diagnosis and monitoring a patient's response to therapy, but it also has great potential in drug discovery.  More...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/August/24081002.asp