Iodine-125 is preferred for this purpose, due to better radiation penetration and shorter half-life (13 hours). I-125 is useful for Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) testing in the diagnosis or monitoring of patients with kidney disease. I-125 is used in Iodine-125 is used "therapeutically" in brachytherapy treatments of tumors. For radiotherapy ablation of tissues that absorb iodine (such as the thyroid), or that absorb an iodine-containing radiopharmaceutical, the beta-emitter iodine-131 is the preferred isotope. I is created by the electron capture decay of Xe, which is a synthetic isotope of xenon, itself created by neutron capture of the slightly radioactive Xe, which
Isotopes of iodine Isotopes of iodine There are 37 known isotopes of iodine (I) from I to I; all undergo radioactive decay except I, which is stable. Iodine is thus a monoisotopic element. Its longest-lived radioactive isotope, I, has a half-life of 15.7 million years, which is far too short for it to exist as a primordial nuclide. Cosmogenic sources of I produce very tiny quantities of it that are too small to affect atomic weight measurements; iodine is thus also a mononuclidic element—one that is found in nature only as a single nuclide. Most I derived radioactivity on Earth is man-made, an