Gallium-67 (half-life 3.3 days) is a gamma-emitting isotope (the gamma ray emitted immediately after electron capture) used in standard nuclear medical imaging, in procedures usually referred to as gallium scans.
The shorter-lived gallium-68 (half-life 68 minutes) is a positron-emitting isotope generated in very small quantities from germanium-68 in gallium-68 generators or in much greater quantities by proton bombardment of 68Zn in low-energy medical cyclotrons,[4][5] for use in a small minority of diagnostic PET scans.
For this use, it is usually attached as a tracer to a carrier molecule (for example the somatostatin analogue DOTATOC), which gives the resulting radiopharmaceutical a different tissue-uptake specificity from the ionic 67Ga radioisotope normally used in standard gallium scans.
Gallium-67 (67Ga) has a half-life of 3.26 days and decays by electron capture and gamma emission (in de-excitation) to stable zinc-67.
Gallium-68 is only used as a positron emitting tag for a ligand which binds to certain tissues, such as DOTATOC, which is a somatostatin analogue useful for imaging neuroendocrine tumors.