Isotopes of iodine iodine-123 and iodine-131 can also be seen by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging. Iodine-124 is a proton-rich isotope of iodine with a half-life of 4.18 days. Its modes of decay are: 74.4% electron capture, 25.6% positron emission. I decays to Te. Iodine-124 can be made by numereous nuclear reactions via a cyclotron. The most common starting material used is Te. Iodine-124 as the iodide salt can be used to directly image the thyroid using positron emission tomography (PET). Iodine-124 can also be used as a PET radiotracer with a usefully longer half-life compared with fluorine-18 In this use,
Iodine be obtained pure. It can be synthesised from the reaction of iodine with fluorine gas in trichlorofluoromethane at −45 °C, with iodine trifluoride in trichlorofluoromethane at −78 °C, or with silver(I) fluoride at 0 °C. Iodine monochloride (ICl) and iodine monobromide (IBr), on the other hand, are moderately stable. The former, a volatile red-brown compound, was discovered independently by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy in 1813–4 not long after the discoveries of chlorine and iodine, and it mimics the intermediate halogen bromine so well that Justus von Liebig was misled into mistaking bromine (which he had found) for iodine