There's finally some good news on the global medical isotope supply front -- Belgium's nuclear regulators have given their approval for the production of medical isotopes at the National Institute of Radioelements at Fleurus.
The facility has been idle since an unexpected release of iodine-131 in August. The extended outage contributed to what already was a strained global supply. The facility at Fleurus plans improvements to its production processes and facilities, staff training, and periodic audits and external verification.
The institute produces iodine-131 for medical diagnosis and therapy applications and molybdenum-99/technetium-99m for cancer treatment.
The Belgian announcement comes after the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG) in the Netherlands last month set a February 2009 restart date for its High Flux Reactor in Petten, extending that facility's downtime to six months.
Related Reading
Dutch reactor won't restart until February 2009, October 15, 2008
Dutch reactor opening delayed another month, September 19, 2008
Dutch reactor down two more months, September 8, 2008
European group meets over isotope supply, September 4, 2008
AECL: Increased production won't cover demand, August 29, 2008
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![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
