Course Description:

This 2-day course provides an overall review of the basic principles that underlie the operation of all 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 complete set of course notes are provided to registrants. The purchase of a recent copy of the textbook “Radiation Detection and Measurement” by G. Knoll is highly recommended.

Course Outline:

Gas-Filled Detectors
Scintillation Detectors
Semiconductor Detectors
Front-end Electronics for Radiation Detectors
Recent Detector Developments and Summary

Instructors:

STEPHEN DERENZO is a Senior Staff Physicist and Head in Department of Radiotracer Development and Imaging Technology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He and his colleagues constructed two pioneering positron emission tomographs and developed scintillation detectors that provide high spatial resolution, depth-of-interaction information, and compact integrated circuit readout. He currently heads a project that has discovered many new high-performance inorganic scintillators for gamma ray imaging and spectroscopy.

VALENTIN JORDANOV is a Senior Member of IEEE and President of Yantel, LLC, Los Alamos. He has provided R&D services and has designed instruments for companies such as Canberra Industries, Amptek and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He is involved with teaching and training at UC Berkeley, University of Tokyo and the IAEA. He has 10 issued patents in the field of Nuclear and X-ray electronics.

SARA POZZI is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at University of Michigan. She previously worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and currently serves as the Director of the Consortium for Verification Technology. She and her group have developed new methods for digital pulse shape discrimination using organic scintillators read out by photomultiplier tubes and silicon photomultipliers for applications in nuclear nonproliferation and homeland security.

GRAHAM SMITH is Senior Physicist and Head of Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from Durham University, England. He has worked for the last thirty years at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA, on development of advanced radiation instrumentation for experimental studies using neutrons, X-rays and charged particles, specializing in gas-filled detectors. He is an IEEE Fellow.

LOTHAR STRUEDER is the scientific director of PNSensor GmbH and professor at the University of Siegen. He earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics at the TU Munich in 1988. His interests generally include position-, energy-, and time-resolving detectors for photons and particles. He is author or co-author of more than 300 technical and scientific publications. He has been issued 13 worldwide patents in scientific instrumentation.

DAVID WEHE is Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at University of Michigan. He worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and served as Director of the Michigan Phoenix Memorial Project, which included the 2-MW Ford Nuclear Reactor. He has served as a consultant to industrial and governmental organizations in technical areas related to radiation measurements.

Course Description:

This one-day course will cover the application of nuclear science, most prominently radiation measurement and analysis methods, in the area of nuclear security that ranges from nuclear material accounting to illicit material trafficking to treaty verification. The intended audience consists of those who seek to understand the science and technology challenges unique to nuclear security missions. Existing commercial instruments will be briefly discussed but the course focuses on the role of nuclear technology in meeting mission needs and challenges faced by emerging technology to meet those needs.

To begin, we will define the scope of “nuclear security” as it pertains to this course, and the various missions that motivate the use of nuclear science. We will discuss the operational environments typically encountered and provide specific examples of technology implementation. To provide high-level context for technology developers, this includes the value of systems-level evaluations as a means to assess technology’s role. A discussion of nuclear signatures will be coupled to an overview of “backgrounds” in nuclear security environs (e.g. ambient background sources, naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM)). The course will then cover the basic classes of passive gamma-ray and neutron detection instrumentation (including imaging techniques) and will discuss how one makes field deployment decisions using this technology. We will elucidate the potential role of “active” interrogation techniques in addressing some of the most challenging nuclear security problems. Finally, the course will provide an overview of enabling and exploratory technologies that could result in key advancements for nuclear security applications in the future and address the changing focus of the nuclear security enterprise.

Course Outline:

Morning Session
• Nuclear Security Overview
    o Missions
    o Signatures
• Sensors & Observables
    o Gamma-ray
    o Neutron
    o Alpha/beta
• Methods
    o gamma-ray spectroscopy
    o active interrogation
    o coincidence

Afternoon Session
• Systems Level View
    o Mission Snapshots
    o Spent Fuel Assay
    o Illicit Nuclear Trafficking
    o Safeguards Sample Analysis
    o Dismantlement Verification
    o International Monitoring System
• Trends & Opportunities
• Questions & Discussion

Instructors:

Dr. Robert (Bob) Runkle is a physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and performs research into radiation detection for national security applications. Bob authored three review articles on the role of gamma-ray spectroscopy, neutron detection, and active interrogation in support of nuclear security missions. In 2009 and 2010, he spent two years at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development where he served as a technical advisor to the Special Nuclear Materials Movement Detection program. Bob served as the National Test Director for NNSA’s Second Line of Defense program and is the deputy principal investigator of PNNL’s Ultra-Sensitive Nuclear Measurements initiative. He is the lead instructor of the Radiation Detection for Nuclear Security summer school hosted at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Bob joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 2003 after receiving his Ph.D. in nuclear astrophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003 where he measured the rates of nuclear fusion reactions relevant to hydrogen burning in stars.

Dr. Daniel Stephens is Technical Manager of the Radiation Detection and Nuclear Sciences group (RDNS) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. RDNS conducts a variety of fundamental and applied research projects leading to new capabilities in trace chemical and radionuclide detection, nuclear and high-energy physics, environmental assessment and remediation, treaty verification, and proliferation detection and prevention. Daniel joined PNNL as a research scientist in February 2003. His most recent assignment was the Project Manager and Principal Investigator for the Radiation Portal Monitor Project at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This project is tasked by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deploy radiation sensors at the nation’s borders and ports of entry and to provide the scientific and technical expertise needed to design, deploy, maintain, and operate these systems. In this role Daniel was responsible for the successful execution of this large, complex, and diverse project which draws upon the talents of 250 staff from across all directorates of the laboratory. From 2006 to 2008 Daniel served as a Technical Advisor to the Advanced Materials and Special Nuclear Material Movement Detection programs in the U.S. Department of Energy-Headquarters, National Nuclear Security Agency, Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22). His career at PNNL has focused on the development and deployment of novel radiation detection instruments with an emphasis on national and homeland security applications. Research topics of interest include advanced spectroscopic identification algorithms, sensor networking, novel radiation detector development, field operations, and operational testing and evaluation. Daniel received his B.S. in Physics from Georgia Southern University, M.S. in Physics, M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Glen Warren is a staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, working in the areas of active interrogation and applied radiation detection. His primary research interest is the application of nuclear resonance fluorescence and other active interrogation techniques to a variety of national and homeland security applications. In addition, Glen specializes in the modeling of complex radiation detectors and the analyses of the data resulting from these systems. Before joining PNNL in 2003, Glen’s research was focused on the electromagnetic structure of the neutron by conducting experiments at electron scattering facilities such as the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Glen received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the College of William and Mary, and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Course Description:

The use of large accelerator-driven X-ray sources such as synchrotron light sources and X-ray free-electron lasers continues to grow and expand to many scientific disciplines worldwide. These facilities are now driving the state of the art of X-ray science, and thus shaping the requirements for many types of X-ray detectors. This one-day course will cover the principles and properties of accelerator-driven X-ray sources and their science applications. Since beam-line instruments, including detectors, are the direct interfaces between the users and the facility, an overview survey of light-source instrumentation will be given, with examples of good practices for efficiently using the instrumentation during the limited time window available for each experiment. The limitations of the existing instrumentation will also be included to stimulate potential collaborations between instrumentation developers and the light source facilities. In addition to providing a basic understanding of science techniques used at modern X-ray sources, this course may help existing and potential users of these facilities to become more effective in submitting user proposals, utilizing the sources, and achieving their scientific and application goals. An addition purpose is to stimulate broad interests from the detector development community into a non-traditional area of detector development.

Course Outline:

1. Accelerator-driven X-ray Sources: Principles of operation of undulator radiation, synchrotrons and X-ray free-electron lasers. (Nguyen)
2. Interactions of X-rays with matter and detector implications (Wang)
3. Overview of instrumentation for accelerator-driven light sources (Kenney)
4. Examples of experiment design and recent science applications (Arthur)
5. Future development of accelerator-driven light sources and beamline instrumentation (Arthur, Kenney or Other)

Instructors:

John Arthur retired from SLAC National Accelerator Lab in 2014 after having led the team that designed and built the LCLS X-ray transport, diagnostics, and experiment support systems and then managing the LCLS X-ray Facilities Operations Division for several years. He had previously worked at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource developing new experimental techniques using X-rays. He received his PhD from MIT in 1983.

Chris Kenney is a scientist with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Prior to joining SLAC, Dr. Kenney was a scientist with the Molecular Biology Consortium, where he worked on high-framerate, x-ray imaging detectors for macromolecular crystallography. He has served as president of the startups MuSquared, which specialized in micro-opitcs, and NanoWerks, which developed a novel micro-patterning technology. During this period he passed the patent bar and is a registered patent agent. From 1989 through 1999, he was a physicist with the University of Hawaii and was involved with: the first silicon vertex detector at a collider, full-depletion CMOS image sensors for ionizing particles, 3D geometry semiconductor sensors, neutron sensors, and active-edge silicon sensors. His science activities have included: exotic atoms, rare kaon decays, the Z boson, digital mammography, the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, and serial femtosecond crystallography. Dr. Kenney currently acts as the lead of the particle physics and astrophysics Sensor Department and the lead of the Detector Department for the Linac Coherent Light Source. He has been interested in instrumentation for neuroscience since late in the twentieth century and has a Ph.D. in particle physics from The College of William and Mary.

Dinh Nguyen is a scientist with Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Bachelor of Science at Indiana University in 1979 and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1984, both in Chemistry. Since joining Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1984, he has done research on single molecule detection using laser-induced fluorescence, up conversion solid-state lasers, radio-frequency (RF) photoelectron injectors, Compton backscattering X-ray generation, the third and fourth generation X-ray sources, including free-electron lasers (FEL). One of Dinh Nguyen’s most important accomplishments was the high-gain infrared self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) that he demonstrated in 1997 using a high-brightness RF photoinjector. The SASE technique is now being used to build X-ray free-electron lasers around the world. He has published more than 100 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He has taught graduate-level courses on accelerator and free-electron laser physics at the US Particle Accelerator School as well as the Directed Energy Professional Society conferences.

Zhehui Wang is with the subatomic physics group of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), then a doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree from the Princeton University. Trained in experimental plasma physics, Dr. Wang has been active in new instrumentation and technology for basic research and applications. His research has led to inventions such as hollow cathode magnetron for thin film deposition, hypervelocity dust injection for magnetic fusion, and boron powder neutron detectors. One of his current projects addresses the ultrafast imaging challenges using X-ray free electron lasers.

Point-of-contact: Zhehui (Jeff) Wang, zwang@lanl.gov, 505 665 5353

This course on science writing will train scientists to become more effective and confident writers. The course will include a combination of lectures, discussions, group exercises, and individual writing practice.

Participants should be proficient in English with a solid grasp of fundamental English grammar. Each participant will also need to bring a laptop or tablet with Word or equivalent word processing software.

Course Outline:

• Introduction
• Cutting unnecessary clutter
• Using active voice
• Avoiding common grammatical errors
• Crafting clear sentences and paragraphs
• Learning to edit and proofread effectively
• Organizing and structuring your writing
• Streamlining the writing process
• Reading critically
• Journal papers
• Grant proposals

Instructor:

Dr. Jennifer Huber, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She has primarily worked to develop medical imaging scanners for improved cancer detection. She is also a freelance science writer who contributes regularly to KQED Science and Berkeley Engineer, as well as a half-time technical writer for a small communications firm called Convey. In addition, she teaches Science Writing for UC Berkeley Extension. You can find more information at her website, https://ScientistsTalkFunny.com/.

This course will survey the state of the art in gamma-ray detectors for PET and SPECT, with a discussion of emerging technologies as well as traditional semiconductor and scintillator devices. The course will begin with a quick review of the interactions of gamma rays with matter and then cover information-carrier generation, analog and digital pulse-processing techniques, triggering, and acquisition architectures. Considerable emphasis will be placed on statistical characterization of the detectors and on optimal estimation methods that take the statistical properties into account. The final segments will be case studies from the instructors’ and other laboratories. A number of live computer demonstrations for attendees’ computers will be included that illustrate selected topics. Lectures will include:
    • A survey of technologies for gamma-ray detection
    • Detector requirements for SPECT and PET
    • State of the art in scintillation detectors
    • State of the art in semiconductor detectors
    • Statistical modeling and estimation methods
    • Event triggering and coincidence techniques
    • Data-acquisition systems
    • Real-time maximum-likelihood estimation methods
    • Examples of applications

Course Outline:

I. Introduction
II. Interactions of gamma rays with matter
III. Semiconductor detector physics
IV. Scintillation detector physics
V. Fundamentals of pulse processing
VI. Acquisition architectures
VII. Detector statistics and estimation methods
VIII. SPECT detectors: state of the art and research directions
IX. PET detectors: state of the art and research directions
X. Discussion

Instructors:

Dr. Levin was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Yale University. He is currently a Professor of Radiology at Stanford University, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Bioengineering. He is Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Innovation in In Vivo Imaging. His research interests involve the development of novel instrumentation and software algorithms for in vivo imaging of cellular and molecular signatures of disease in clinical and preclinical applications.

Dr. Lewellen was educated at Occidental College and the University of Washington. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, with appointments in the Department of Radiology (School of Medicine) and Electrical Engineering. He is director of the Nuclear Medicine Detector Laboratory and a fellow of the IEEE. His major research is in the development of electronics and detector systems for SPECT and PET.

Dr. Furenlid was educated at the University of Arizona and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently a Professor at the University of Arizona and associate director of the Center for Gamma-ray Imaging, with appointments in the Department of Radiology and the College of Optical Sciences. He was a staff scientist at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His major research area is the development and application of detectors, electronics, and systems for biomedical imaging.

This course is intended as an introduction to fundamental concepts of biochemistry and molecular biology as they relate to molecular imaging technologies. We will begin with a discussion on the major biomolecules of the cell, including key metabolites, DNA, RNA, and proteins, and how they are generated. We will then consider how these biomolecules come together to form the major subcellular structures, how cells process information through changes in cell signaling, and how this leads to important cellular decisions, such as whether to divide. This will lead into a discussion on how dysfunction in these fundamental pathways leads to the pathogenesis of human diseases such as cancer and neurological disorders. Finally we will discuss how this information can be exploited to develop new molecular imaging probes, with a particular emphasis on the development and use of PET imaging probes.

Course Outline:

Introduction: Overview of molecular imaging in biology
Part 1: Biochemistry of the cell
    • Metabolism
    • DNA synthesis
    • RNA transcription
    • Protein translation
    • Post-translational modification
Part 2: Cellular structure and processes
    • Subcellular organization of Eukaryotic cells
    • Cell signaling
    • Cell cycle
Part 3: The biology of disease
    • Cancer
    • Neurological disorders
Part 4: Applications of molecular imaging to biology
    • New PET probe development
    • Imaging guided drug development
    • Staging and treatment of cancer

Instructors:

Dr. David Nathanson is an Assistant Professor of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. at UCLA under Dr. Paul Mischel in 2011 and conducted his post-doctoral work with Drs. Caius Radu and Johannes Czernin at UCLA. Dr. Nathanson’s current work focuses on investigating the highly interconnected relationship between aberrant signal transduction and metabolism in cancer, with a strong emphasis on using positron emission tomography (PET) to dynamically measure changes in tumor metabolism with therapies that interfere with oncogenic signaling.

Dr. Jason Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. He is a member of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and is Director of its Preclinical Imaging Technology Center. Dr. Lee received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Molecular and Medical Pharmacology and did his postdoctoral training in molecular imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. His work focuses on the development and integration of in vivo imaging assays (namely, PET, CT, optical) to quantitatively assess the functional dynamics of health and disease, and to guide associated therapeutic interventions.

Dr. Peter Clark is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Owen Witte at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and his undergraduate degree from Cornell University. His research focuses on developing and studying novel PET imaging probes for use in understanding and imaging human biology and disease.

Course Description:

The growing success of SPECT and PET imaging combined with CT or MR has led to the evolution of molecular imaging modalities that assist in improving diagnosis and staging of diseases. SPECT and PET imaging are increasingly used to drive patient therapy, therefore reliable image quantification and high image quality are important factors. Image reconstruction methods have a key role in converting the measurement to a meaningful image. Along with new hardware developments, image reconstruction offers a stimulating research environment for advancement of SPECT and PET imaging.

This course will provide an overview of tomographic image reconstruction methods used in computerized tomography, primarily focusing on SPECT and PET with an emphasis on iterative methods. It will start with the fundamentals of image reconstruction for both nuclear medical imaging modalities drawing parallels with CT. It will then describe current methods to account for the physics of the acquisition process and other factors such as motion. The third part of the course will cover demonstrations and practical exercises with an open source library for PET and SPECT image reconstruction (STIR: https://stir.sourceforge.net). The attendees will have the opportunity to simulate and reconstruct data, perform scatter correction, motion correction and other tasks. Prerequisite knowledge includes basic principles of physics of x-rays and γ-rays, statistics, calculus, and elementary linear algebra. For the practical sessions, students are advised to bring their own laptop and install STIR before attending the course. Necessary guidelines will be provided in advance. Basic knowledge of Linux bash terminal commands is recommended.

Course Outline:

Tomographic reconstruction introduction
Basics of analytical and iterative reconstruction for CT, PET and SPECT
Basics of fully 3D iterative reconstruction for both SPECT and PET
Basics of model-based SPECT and PET reconstruction (e.g. Attenuation, Scatter, Motion, Resolution Modeling)
Advanced iterative SPECT and PET reconstruction (e.g. MLAA, Kinetic Parameters, Anatomical priors)
Demos and practical exercises with open source software for both SPECT and PET

Instructors:

Johan Nuyts is a professor of the Faculty of Medicine at KU Leuven, Belgium. He is with the Department of Nuclear Medicine and with the Medical Imaging Research Center (MIRC). He received his Ph.D. in applied sciences from KU Leuven in 1991 on the subject of image reconstruction and quantification in SPECT. He co-authored about 120 scientific journal papers. His main research interest is in iterative reconstruction in PET, SPECT and CT. Ongoing research projects focus on maximum-a-posteriori reconstruction in emission tomography, iterative reconstruction in CT and tomosynthesis, attenuation correction in PET/CT, PET/MRI and TOF-PET, and motion correction in PET and CT.

Kris Thielemans is a Senior Lecturer at University College London (UCL) and is an IEEE senior member. He received his PhD degree in String Theory from KU Leuven in 1994. Prior to UCL, he has been working as a Researcher at Hammersmith (London, UK) for the Medical Research Council and General Electric, and at King’s College London (KCL). His research interests encompass all aspects of quantitative PET image reconstruction with emphasis on the development of advanced reconstruction techniques for PET and SPECT including motion correction. He developed along with others an open source software for tomographic image reconstruction (STIR), which has been cited more than 250 times.

Charalampos (Harry) Tsoumpas is a Lecturer of Medical Imaging at the Division of Biomedical Imaging, University of Leeds in the UK since 2013 and Visiting Faculty with the Translational Molecular Imaging Institute at Mount Sinai, New York since 2014. He received his Ph.D. degree in Parametric Image Reconstruction from Imperial College London in 2008 and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at KCL on PET-MR. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and Fellow of Higher Education Academy. He has contributions in more than 40 peer-reviewed papers, 30 IEEE conference records and two patents with GE Healthcare. His research interests include statistical image reconstruction and acquisition process modeling for more accurate and precise PET and PET-MR imaging.