Carbon-11 lactate can be used with PET scanners to detect lactate uptake in the brain, but its short half-life presents logistical challenges.

“Budinger really helped develop pet and um help make NMR clinically relevant uh he did experiments with carbon 11 lactate so it g in the pet scanner it gives a signal as do fluo deoxy glucose so that way uh you could see lactate taken up by the brain the difficulty with those experiments I think the half-life of carbon carbon uh 11 is on the order of minutes 20 minutes so the first experiments involved somebody in the cyclotron making carbon 11 lactate putting it in a lead Line Station Wagon driving it down running it through a column to remove the strum 82 and then infusing it into a brain and imaging the brain so it's possible with carbon 11 to do that experiment”