Abstract:
41Ca, a long-lived radioactive isotope of calcium (Ca), is considered as an ideal biological tracer, and has been widely used in the biomedical field. But its development has been limited by measurement techniques. The traditional decay counting measurement techniques cannot be used for
41Ca analysis due to its low measurement efficiency, high sample requirement and long time consuming. It is also difficult to eliminate interferences from the stable
41K isobar and molecular species so as to obtain the ideal detection limit for conventional mass spectrometric measurements. However, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is the most commonly analysis method for
41Ca, which has the advantages of smaller sample size (mg magnitude), shorter measurement time (~ 1 h) and higher detection sensitivity (
41Ca/
40Ca abundance sensitivity can be 10
-15). The key of
41Ca AMS measurement is how to eliminate or separate the isobar
41K. In this paper, the development of AMS measurement methods for
41Ca was reviewed from the selection of sample form and instrument technology. On the one hand, the use of either CaH
2 or CaF
2 can effectively inhibit the interferences from the stable
41K isobar. In contrast, the preparation process of CaF
2 is simpler and more convenient to store. In the beam extraction stage, the suppression of the isobar
41K is about 4 orders of magnitude, which satisfies the measurement requirements of biological samples with
41Ca as tracer. On the other hand,
41Ca-AMS measurement technology has improved as AMS has been miniaturized. We compared the characteristics, advantages and limitations of different energy AMS for
41Ca analysis. The large (≥ 5 MV) AMS has sufficient ability to discriminate
41K, and the measurement sensitivity is generally 10
-14 to 10
-15. But it is not widely used due to the high cost and professional requirements of instrument operation. For the small (≤ 3 MV) AMS that are the most widely used, the d
E/d
x, ΔTOF and ISA method can be used to partially separate
41Ca from
41K. The measurement sensitivity is on the order of 10
-12 to 10
-13 and is expected to be lower. The compact AMS with lower energy (≤ 1 MV) cannot separate
41Ca and
41K at low energy. But it can analyse
41Ca indirectly by measure
39K to correct for the
41K background, and the measurement sensitivity is generally 10
-11 to 10
-12. On this basis, the application of
41Ca-AMS analysis technology in the biomedicine field was introduced.
41Ca-AMS analysis technology is an important means to investigate the bone metabolism in organisms. It has certain potential in evaluating human bone health, monitoring bone remodeling dynamics, and establishing linear dynamic models of human calcium balance.
41Ca-AMS tracer technology can be used for early diagnosis and prognostic monitoring of related diseases in clinical medicine. This technique can also evaluate the effect of weightlessness on the ability of femur to take up exogenous calcium and the mechanism of bone mass loss and bone calcium metabolism disorder, so as to propose targeted preventive and therapeutic measures. By using
41Ca to label the calcium reservoir in vivo, the calcium absorption rate can be measured more accurately, which provides theoretical guidance for the determination of clinical calcium supplement dose. The intracellular dynamics of calcium ions can also be investigated by
41Ca-AMS tracer technology to study the mechanism of related diseases. In addition,
41Ca-AMS technology can also conduct tracer studies on plants, which is expected to provide help for scientific calcium supplementation of crops and deciphering the chemical interaction process at the interface of plant-soil system. Thus,
41Ca has been widely used in the biomedical field, and it is irreplaceable because of its security in the study of the human body. In recent years, with the development of domestic
41Ca-AMS analysis technology, it is expected to provide technical support for the further development of related frontier research in the future.