Natural Resources committee  Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the committee. So who is TRIUMF? TRIUMF is Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. It's run and operated by a consortium of about 14 Canadian universities, stretching from Saint Mary's in Nova Scotia to McMas

Natural Resources committee  I think that may be the question you have to decide. I'm somewhat biased towards PET—I might as well just tell you that—so I think the answer is I that see it as where the field is going. It's a question of how big it becomes and whether it really replaces SPECT, because SPECT, a

Natural Resources committee  It is sales—sales last year.

Natural Resources committee  It's a good question. PET, if we call it a modality, is a more modern modality. It has better resolution, better precision. It has, I would say, taken off in the cancer world, and it's becoming very popular for cancer screening. It has the potential of new molecules being develo

Natural Resources committee  Yes. The estimate was that there were about 900 cameras and maybe eight treatments per day per camera, so I was rounding it up for you.

Natural Resources committee  For PET to take off, first of all you need access to the isotopes that are made by cyclotrons. So you have to make the investment for cyclotrons, and that's not going to be made in every hospital. Every hospital can afford a SPECT. The SPECT camera is fairly small and fairly stra

Natural Resources committee  There are a number of major companies that make cyclotrons now. IBA is probably the largest company; it's a Belgian company. GE Healthcare makes cyclotrons; there's a Japanese company that makes them; there's a Canadian company that makes cyclotrons in Vancouver, Ebco . So it's a

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I do.

Natural Resources committee  That's a good question. My impression from talking with people at MDS Nordion is that for technetium-99 it's kind of flat. It's not a growing field. I made a comment earlier about PET. It's growing where I expect the growth to be--in centres wanting small cyclotrons to produce

Natural Resources committee  I said there were 400 cyclotrons worldwide that were not commercial. If you include commercial, there are about 900. That's an estimate, because you don't really know how many commercial ones there are.

Natural Resources committee  I think I said for medical purposes in Canada, those that are being used and those about to be used, it is 16.

Natural Resources committee  Big medical centres want both. They want to produce isotopes for clinical use and the doctors want to do research with them at the same time. They have a dual function.

Natural Resources committee  I would say a major medical centre is where you have this activity.

Natural Resources committee  It wasn't so much financing. There are people who have patents on producing, for example, technetium-99, or moly-99, using accelerators.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but my general feeling is that since we've worked so closely with MDS Nordion in the past, in anything we would do we would want them to be involved, because that's their business. They're experts on many aspects of it. As you know, there'