Course Description:
This one-day course is intended to introduce physicists and detector specialists to the fundamentals of integrated circuit front end design. The class begins with a discussion of low-noise signal processing and semiconductor devices and then delves into the details of implementing practical circuits in modern CMOS technology. A basic knowledge of detectors and electronics is assumed.

Course Outline
1. Pulse Processing Fundamentals
- Signal formation in detectors
- Noise and gain mechanisms
- Pulse processing for amplitude and timing extraction
2. Semiconductor Technology for Integrated Circuit Front Ends
- Operation and characteristics of MOS and bipolar transistors
- Sub-micron CMOS and BICMOS technology
- Feature size scaling
- Radiation effects and reliability
- Mixed-signal circuits
3. Analog circuit design
- The IC design process and CAD tools
- Foundry access, multiproject services
- Building blocks for the analog channel: charge-sensitive and pulse-shaping amplifiers, baseline stabilizers, peak detectors, track/hold, multiplexers, output stages
- Analog-to-digital and time-to-digital converters (ADC and TDC)
4. Packaging and Interconnect
5. Application examples

Veljko Radeka, Senior Scientist and Head of Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National laboratory. His interests have been in scientific instruments, radiation detectors, noise and signal processing, and low noise electronics. He authored or coauthored about 170 publications. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of APS, and recipient of the 2009 Howard Wheeler Award from the IEEE.

Paul O'Connor is associate Head of the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After receiving the Ph.D. degree in solid-state physics from Brown University he worked from 1980-1990 at AT&T Bell Laboratories prior to joining BNL. His research interests are in the field of instrumentation systems for radiation detection, particularly low noise analog CMOS front-end circuits. He is author and co-author of about 70 publications and has been an IEEE member since 1980.

John Oliver has been supervisor of the "Detector Electronics Facility" at Harvard University's "Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology" since 1980. He has a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics from Boston University and worked in industry designing commercial electronics before joining Harvard. At Harvard, his primary interests are in signal formation in particle detectors and front end electronics, both discrete and ASIC, but has also designed data acquisition and triggering systems. In the past decade, he has worked on electronic readout systems for the MINOS and NOvA neutrino detectors, the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer, and is currently Camera Electronics Project Manager for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. He has been a member of IEEE since 1985.

 

Course Description:
This 2-day course provides an overall review of the basic principles that underlie the operation of the major types of instruments used in the detection and spectroscopy of charged particles, gamma rays, and other forms of ionizing radiation. Examples of both established applications and recent developments are drawn from areas including particle physics, nuclear medicine, homeland security, and general radiation spectroscopy. Emphasis is on understanding the fundamental processes that govern the operation of radiation detectors, rather than on operational details that are unique to specific commercial instruments. This course does not cover radiation dosimetry or health physics instrumentation. The level of presentation is best suited to those with some prior background in radiation measurements, but can also serve to introduce topics that may be outside their experience base. A copy of the new 4th edition of the textbook "Radiation Detection and Measurement", by G. Knoll, and a set of course notes are provided to registrants.

Outline:
1. Gas-Filled Detectors
2. Scintillation Counters
3. Semiconductor Detectors
4. Front-end Electronics for Radiation Detectors
5. Recent Detector Developments and Summary

GIUSEPPE BERTUCCIO is Professor of Electronics at Politecnico di Milano and member of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics. He received the Laurea in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico and since 1987 he joined the research group of Professor Emilio Gatti, contributing to the pioneering development of integrated electronics for Silicon Drift Detectors. In 1991 he was invited at Brookhaven National Laboratory and in 1993 at Canberra Industries to collaborate in R&D on low noise preamplifiers. His current research activities are related to the design of CMOS integrated circuits for radiation detectors and to compound semiconductor X-ray detectors. He collaborates with Check Cap, LPE, Selex and Thales Alenia Space companies for R&D in radiation detection systems. He is author or co- author of over 100 scientific publications and of 15 invited talks at international conferences.

STEPHEN E. DERENZO is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Head of the Radiotracer Development and Imaging Technology Department in the Life Sciences Division, and Professor-in-Residence in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at UC Berkeley. He and his colleagues constructed two pioneering positron emission tomographs (PET) and developed advanced scintillation detectors for PET that provide high spatial resolution, depth-of-interaction information, and compact integrated circuit readout. For the past 22 years he has lead a search for new heavy scintillators and currently heads a project for the discovery of scintillation detector materials that uses automation to increase the rate of synthesis and characterization. He has authored or co-authored over 200 technical publications, seven patents, and one textbook. He has received two awards from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society: the Merit Award in 1992 and the Radiation Instrumentation Outstanding Achievement Award in 2001. He became an IEEE Fellow in 2000.

EUGENE E. HALLER is Professor of Materials Science at UC Berkeley and holds the Liao-Cho Innovation Endowed Chair and a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he heads the Electronic Materials Program. He received his Ph.D. degree in nuclear and applied physics from the University of Basel, Switzerland for surface studies of large volume p-i-n germanium diodes used as gamma-ray detectors. His research interests cover a wide spectrum of semiconductor topics including basic semiconductor physics, thin film and bulk crystal growth and advanced detectors for electromagnetic radiation ranging from the far-infrared to gamma rays. He has authored and co-authored over 800 scientific/technical publications. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and AAAS, has won the James McGroddy Prize for New Materials of the APS, the Turnbull Lectureship Award of the MRS. He held visiting professorships at institutes in England, Germany and Japan.

GLENN F. KNOLL is Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan. He joined the Michigan faculty in 1962, and served as Chairman of the Department of Nuclear Engineering from 1979 to 1990, and as Interim Dean of the College of Engineering in 1995-96. He is author or co-author of over 200 technical publications, 7 patents, and 2 textbooks. In 1999 he was inducted to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. In 2000 he received the highest faculty award from the College of Engineering of the University of Michigan, the Stephen E. Attwood Award. He has served as consultant to over 35 industrial and governmental organizations in technical areas related to radiation measurements. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, was selected for the 1996 IEEE/NPSS Merit Award and the 2007 IEEE/NPSS Radiation Instrumentation Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2000 was a recipient of the Third Millennium Medal of the Society.

GRAHAM C. SMITH is a physicist in the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He received a Ph.D in Physics from Durham University, England in 1974, followed by postdoctoral work in nuclear electronics and detector instrumentation for X-ray Astronomy at Leicester University. In 1982 he joined Brookhaven's Instrumentation Division to participate in development of high accuracy position-sensitive detectors and electronics, becoming a tenured staff member in 1994. He received Brookhaven's Research and Development Award in 1996, and the IEEE Long Island Regional Award for Contributions to High Energy Physics in 1998. He has an active research program in development of detectors, particularly gas-based detectors, for ionizing radiation measurement in synchrotron, neutron and particle physics experiments.

 

Course Description:
This 1-day course will discuss the photodetector technology that is used in the readout of scintillation crystals for nuclear radiation detection. The main photodetector used in scintillation spectroscopy at present is the photomultiplier tube (PMT) and its current status and on-going advances will be covered. The course will also present recent advances in silicon-based photodetectors such as unity gain silicon PIN diodes, drift detectors, high gain avalanche photodiodes (APDs), and the new silicon photomultipliers. The potentials of wider-gap semiconductor-based photodetectors will be included. Front-end electronic readout designs for these different types of photodetectors will also be covered. Examples of detector configurations that employ various types of photodetectors in applications such as medical imaging and physics research will be given. Presentation materials will be provided as handouts. Some prior background in scintillation spectroscopy would be desirable but not essential.

Outline:
1. Overview
2. Photomultiplier Tubes
3. Solid State Photodetectors based on Silicon & Wider Bandgap Semiconductors
4. Front-end Electronics
5. Applications of Photodetectors in Physics Research and Nuclear Medicine

Instructors:
Daniel Ferenc is a Professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. from Zagreb University and CERN, Geneva, in 1992. His research interests include relativistic universe, high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray astronomy and next-generation underground lab for proton decay and neutrino physics. He has been actively involved in the development of photomultiplier tubes for use in his research interests. He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, 1993-94.

Fred Olschner founded Cremat, Inc. (Watertown MA), which is a business providing amplifier components used in nuclear instrumentation. He has been its president since its start in 2000, and has designed its products. Previous to that he was a senior scientist at Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. in Watertown, MA, developing various new semiconductor radiation detection materials, as well as new designs of silicon photodiodes. He received M.S. in Physics 1984 from University of New Hampshire.

Kanai Shah is an R&D Vice President at the Radiation Monitoring Devices in Watertown, MA. He received his M.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in 1987. His research interests include detector materials for detection and imaging of gamma-rays, charged particles and neutrons as well as optical readout technologies used in conjunction with scintillation crystals. He has been investigating semiconductor and scintillation crystals as well as photodetection technologies (such as PMTs, APDs and SiPMs).

Craig Woody is a Senior Physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1978. His research interests are primarily in the area of particle detectors and instrumentation for high energy and nuclear physics and medical imaging. These include various types of scintillating crystals and other types of scintillation detectors, optical readout devices and their associated electronics, laser systems, and gas detectors for particle tracking and imaging applications. Other primary research interests are in relativistic heavy ion physics with the PHENIX Experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven.

 

Course Description:
Multimodality imaging systems are used increasingly in clinical medicine in an attempt to get better diagnostic or scientific information by acquiring images depicting different aspects of the object, such as physiological and functional characteristics. A newly emerging methodology with similar goals is adaptive imaging in which an initial image of a particular subject is acquired and then used to modify the data-acquisition hardware or protocol for obtaining a second image from the same or a different modality. In this case the imaging process is necessarily nonlinear because the characteristics of the second system depend on the object being imaged. Because the goal of both adaptive and multimodality imaging is to obtain better information about a patient, the proper measure of image quality assesses how well this information can be extracted from the whole set of image data by a relevant observer. This approach, known as objective or task- based assessment of image quality, is well developed for single modalities and for linear, object- independent systems, but little has been done on applying it to adaptive and multimodality systems. This course will review the basic principles of task-based assessment of image quality and discuss how they can be applied to adaptive and multimodality systems. It will cover the basic theory, hardware implementations, computational requirements and clinical applications. A tentative sequence of lectures is:
1. Overview of multimodality imaging systems
2. Introduction to adaptive imaging
3. Principles of task-based assessment of image quality
4. Task-based analysis of adaptive and multimodality systems
5. Hardware considerations
6. Data-analysis methods and computational requirements
7. Applications

Dr. Barrett was educated at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, MIT and Harvard. He is currently a Regents Professor at the University of Arizona, with appointments in the College of Optical Sciences, the Department of Radiology, the Arizona Cancer Center and the graduate programs in Applied Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering. He is director of the Center for Gamma-Ray Imaging and a fellow of the IEEE. In collaboration with Kyle J. Myers, he has written a book entitled Foundations of Image Science, which in 2006 was awarded the First Biennial J. W. Goodman Book Writing Award from OSA and SPIE.

Dr. Furenlid received a B.S. at the University of Arizona in 1983 and a Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1988. He was a staff scientist at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory 1988-1998. He returned to the University of Arizona in 1998 to help found the Center for Gamma-ray Imaging (CGRI). He is currently a Professor at the University of Arizona with joint appointments in the Department of Radiology and the College of Optical Sciences, and serves as associate director of CGRI. He is also a member of the University of Arizona Graduate Interdisciplinary Degree Program in Biomedical Engineering and the Arizona Cancer Center. His major research area is the development and application of detectors, electronics, and systems for biomedical imaging, with an emphasis on nuclear medicine and computed tomography.

Dr. Kupinski is an Associate Professor in the College of Optical Sciences at The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He performs theoretical research in the field of imaging science. His recent research emphasis is on quantifying the quality of multimodality medical imaging systems using objective, task-based measures of image quality. He has a BS in physics from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and received his PhD in 2000 from the University of Chicago. He is the recipient of the 2007 Mark Tetalman Award given out by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and is a member of the OSA and SPIE. Contact him at College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona, 1630 E. University Blvd., Tucson, Arizona 85721; mkupinski@optics.arizona.edu.

 

Course Description:
The advances in CT, SPECT, and PET imaging have come with increased options in terms of image reconstruction, including a large number of statistical reconstruction algorithms and fully 3D reconstruction methods. This course will provide an overview of image reconstruction methods. Rather than advocating any particular method, this course will emphasize the fundamental issues that one must consider when choosing between different reconstruction approaches. The intended audience is anyone who would like to reconstruct "better" images from photon-limited and/or non- stationary measurements, and who wants to make informed choices between the various methods. Both emission tomography and transmission tomography algorithms will be discussed. Attendees should be familiar with photon-counting imaging systems at the level presented in the Medical Imaging short course offered in previous years.

Program:
- Basic analytical methods 1
- Basic analytical methods 2
- Coffee break
- Basic iterative methods 1
- Basic iterative methods 2
- Lunch
- Advanced analytical methods 1
- Advanced analytical methods 2
- Coffee break
- Advanced iterative methods 1
- Advanced iterative methods 2

Adam Alessio is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Washington, Seattle WA. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the university of Notre Dame in 2003 on the subject of Statistical Reconstruction from Correlated PET Data. His research focuses on tomographic image reconstruction development and protocol optimization for PET and CT systems. He is involved in translational research projects for topics including motion compensation, cardiac perfusion imaging, accurate PET system modeling, and statistical estimation of parametric images.

Michel Defrise received the Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from the University of Brussels in 1981, and was a visiting professor in the Department of Radiology of the University of Geneva in 1992-1993. He is currently research professor in the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the VUB University Hospital in Brussels. He has participated actively in the advancement of 3-D PET and CT methodology. Several of his algorithms are implemented in clinical imaging systems and/or are considered essential building blocks for other methods. His current research interests include 3-D image reconstruction in nuclear medicine (PET and SPECT) and in CT.

Paul Kinahan (Course Organizer) is a Professor of Radiology, adjunct in Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering, in the Department of Radiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He received his PhD in Bioengineering in 1994 on the subject of fully-3D image reconstruction for PET. In 1998 he was part of the group under Dr David Townsend that built the first PET/CT scanner. His current research interests include respiratory motion compensation, dual-kVp CT scanning, clinical protocol optimization, and quantitation in PET/CT imaging.

Frederic Noo is an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Utah. He holds adjunct appointments at the same level in Bioengineering, and also in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is an IEEE member and an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. He has co-authored 46 peer-reviewed papers, and 67 conference records. His research is focused on image reconstruction techniques for medical imaging using x-ray computed tomography (CT). His projects include the development of such techniques for helical CT, for cardiac CT imaging of the whole heart using cone-beam data collection within a single heartbeat, and for cone-beam imaging with flat panel detectors in interventional radiology. One fundamental problem with cone-beam tomography is the handling of truncation in the projections. Significant progress has been made on this problem over the last few years, but many problems remain. This issue is integral to his research projects.

 

Course Description:
This course will introduce the attendees to the fundamentals of molecular imaging: biological mechanisms and molecular probes, imaging technologies and their applications, with focus on SPECT and PET. The course is aimed to physicists and engineers new to the field of molecular imaging and its technologies. It does not require previous knowledge of molecular biology and medical imaging techniques, but basic understanding of biological mechanisms and physics of radiation interaction is assumed.

The course will be organized in 2 parts: basics and advanced topics. Basics: This part will cover the basics of molecular imaging and molecular probe mechanisms, including an overview of the imaging techniques available, the principles and basic technology of SPECT and PET, and an introduction to their main clinical applications.

1) Introduction to molecular imaging and modalities, optical imaging, marks of cancer, molecular probes
2) Single-photon imaging technology and applications
3) PET physics and reconstruction Advanced topics: This part will touch on more recent developments and interesting main topics of research in terms of biomarkers science and technology, imaging instrumentation and clinical applications.
4) Advances in molecular imaging: targeted imaging probes and the role of PET and SPECT imaging, probes targeting proliferation, angiogenesis, reporter genes and metastasis.
5) Advances in imaging technology
6) Advances in clinical applications

Dr. Maurizio Conti is a Senior Staff Scientist at Siemens Healthcare Molecular Imaging in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the last 10 years at Siemens (previously CTI) he has been working on PET physics, detectors, and reconstruction. His current focus is on TOF PET detectors, reconstruction and clinical applications. Before joining CTI in 2000, he was Researcher at the Department of Physics of the Federico II University, in Napoli, Italy.

Dr. Richard E. Carson is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Diagnostic Radiology at Yale University. He is Director of the Yale PET Center and is Director of Graduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering. His research focus is on the development and application of mathematical techniques for the study of human beings and non-human primates with PET. Dr. Carson has published over 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals, given over 60 invited lectures.

Dr. Michael E. Casey is the Director of Physics for Siemens Molecular Imaging in Knoxville Tennessee. Starting in 1982 at EG&G Ortec and then at CTI and finally at Siemens, Dr. Casey has been involved in all aspects of PET tomograph design including detectors, electronics, corrections and image reconstruction. Dr. Casey holds 20 patents in PET and has authored or co-authored over a hundred papers. His current focus is on improving PET image quality, and developing new applications for PET.

Dr. Sridhar Nimmagadda is an Assistant Professor of Radiology, Oncology and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received a Ph.D in Cancer Biology from Wayne State University in 2005 with the primary focus on proliferation imaging. His research interests are in the development of molecular imaging probes (PET, SPECT, optical) for metastatic disease.

Dr. A. Hans Vija is the manager of the Physics and Reconstruction research team of Siemens Molecular Imaging in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Starting in 2001 at Siemens, Dr. Vija has been involved in the system design of a SPECT/CT system and worked on improving reconstruction and compensation methods for SPECT and SPECT/CT systems. His current focus is on improving multimodality SPECT imaging.