SAFIR-I: Design and Performance of a High-Rate Preclinical PET Insert for MRI.

(1) Background: Small Animal Fast Insert for MRI detector I (SAFIR-I) is a preclinical Positron Emission Tomography (PET) insert for the Bruker BioSpec 70/30 Ultra Shield Refrigerated (USR) preclinical 7T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system. It is designed explicitly for high-rate kinetic studies in mice and rats with injected activities reaching 500MBq, enabling truly simultaneous quantitative PET and Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging with time frames of a few seconds in length. (2) Methods: SAFIR-I has an axial field of view of 54.2mm and an inner diameter of 114mm. It employs Lutetium Yttrium OxyorthoSilicate (LYSO) crystals and Multi Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) arrays. The Position-Energy-Timing Application Specific Integrated Circuit, version 6, Single Ended (PETA6SE) digitizes the MPPC signals and provides time stamps and energy information. (3) Results: SAFIR-I is MR-compatible. The system's Coincidence Resolving Time (CRT) and energy resolution are between separate-uncertainty 209.0(3)ps and separate-uncertainty 12.41(02) Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) at low activity and separate-uncertainty 326.89(12)ps and separate-uncertainty 20.630(011) FWHM at 550MBq, respectively. The peak sensitivity is ∼1.6. The excellent performance facilitated the successful execution of first in vivo rat studies beyond 300MBq. Based on features visible in the acquired images, we estimate the spatial resolution to be ∼2mm in the center of the Field Of View (FOV). (4) Conclusion: The SAFIR-I PET insert provides excellent performance, permitting simultaneous in vivo small animal PET/MR image acquisitions with time frames of a few seconds in length at activities of up to 500MBq.

SAFIR-I: first NEMA NU 4-2008-based performance characterization.

BACKGROUND: Small Animal Fast Insert for MRI detector I (SAFIR-I) is a novel Positron Emission Tomography insert for a [Formula: see text] Bruker BioSpec 70/30 Ultra Shield Refrigerated Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system. It facilitates truly simultaneous quantitative imaging in mice and rats at injected activities as high as [Formula: see text]. Exploitation of the resulting high count rates enables quick image formation at few seconds per frame. In this investigation, key performance parameters of SAFIR-I have been determined according to the evaluations outlined in the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) Standards Publication NU 4-2008 (NEMA-NU4) protocol. RESULTS: Using an energy window of 391 to [Formula: see text] and a Coincidence Timing Window of [Formula: see text], the following performance was observed: The average spatial resolution at [Formula: see text] radial offset (Full Width at Half Maximum) is [Formula: see text] when using Filtered Backprojection, 3D Reprojection reconstruction. For the mouse- and rat-like phantoms, the maximal Noise-Equivalent Count Rates (NECRs) are [Formula: see text] at the highest tested average effective concentration of [Formula: see text], and [Formula: see text] at the highest tested average effective concentration of [Formula: see text], respectively. The NECR peak is not yet reached for either of these cases. The peak sensitivity is [Formula: see text]. The Image Quality phantom uniformity standard deviation is [Formula: see text]. The Recovery Coefficient for the [Formula: see text] rod is [Formula: see text]. The Spill-Over Ratios are [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], for the water- and air-filled cylinder, respectively. An accuracy of [Formula: see text] was achieved for the quantitative calibration of reconstructed voxel values. CONCLUSIONS: The measured performance parameters indicate that the various design goals have been achieved. SAFIR-I offers excellent performance, especially at the high activities it was designed for. This facilitates planned experiments with fast tracer kinetics in small animals. Ways to potentially improve performance can still be explored. Simultaneously, further performance gains can be expected for a forthcoming insert featuring 2.7 times longer axial coverage named Small Animal Fast Insert for MRI detector II (SAFIR-II).

Attending lectures in person, hybrid or online-how do students choose, and what about the outcome?

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, most courses at a large technical university were adapted so that students had a free choice of whether to attend lectures on-site or online; in addition, in many courses, lecture recordings were available. At the subsequent exam session, over 17,000 student-survey responses were collected regarding attendance choices, learning behavior, interest in the course, perception of the exam, and recommendations to future students. A total of 27 learner attributes and their relationships were investigated. In addition, conditional attributes and free-response statements were analyzed, and the students' exam grades were retrieved to gauge their performance. We found only minute differences with respect to exam performance, but the analysis indicates distinctly different preferences and constraints in taking advantage of learning opportunities. We also found some indications that performance differences might be larger for interactive-engagement courses. The results of the analysis may be key to answering why at many universities, faculty report that live-lecture attendance has decreased more strongly than expected with the availability of new, virtual attendance modes.

NEMA characterization of the SAFIR prototype PET insert.

BACKGROUND: The SAFIR prototype insert is a preclinical Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner built to acquire dynamic images simultaneously with a 7 T Bruker Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. The insert is designed to perform with an excellent coincidence resolving time of 194 ps Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) and an energy resolution of 13.8% FWHM. These properties enable it to acquire precise quantitative images at activities as high as 500 MBq suitable for studying fast biological processes within short time frames (< 5 s). In this study, the performance of the SAFIR prototype insert is evaluated according to the NEMA NU 4-2008 standard while the insert is inside the MRI without acquiring MRI data. RESULTS: Applying an energy window of 391-601 keV and a coincidence time window of 500 ps the following results are achieved. The average spatial resolution at 5 mm radial offset is 2.6 mm FWHM when using the Filtered Backprojection 3D Reprojection (FBP3DRP) reconstruction method, improving to 1.2 mm when using the Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization (MLEM) method. The peak sensitivity at the center of the scanner is 1.06%. The Noise Equivalent count Rate (NECR) is 799 kcps at the highest measured activity of 537 MBq for the mouse phantom and 121 kcps at the highest measured activity of 624 MBq for the rat phantom. The NECR peak is not yet reached for any of the measurements. The scatter fractions are 10.9% and 17.8% for the mouse and rat phantoms, respectively. The uniform region of the image quality phantom has a 3.0% STD, with a 4.6% deviation from the expected number of counts per voxel. The spill-over ratios for the water and air chambers are 0.18 and 0.17, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results satisfy all the requirements initially considered for the insert, proving that the SAFIR prototype insert can obtain dynamic images of small rodents at high activities ([Formula: see text] 500 MBq) with a high sensitivity and an excellent count-rate performance.

Implementation of cylindrical PET scanners with block detector geometry in STIR.

BACKGROUND: Software for Tomographic Image Reconstruction (STIR) is an open-source library for PET and SPECT image reconstruction, implementing iterative reconstruction as well as 2D- and 3D-filtered back projection. Quantitative reconstruction of PET data requires the knowledge of the scanner geometry. Typical scanners, clinical as well as pre-clinical ones, use a block-type geometry. Several rectangular blocks of crystals are arranged into regular polygons. Multiple of such polygons are arranged along the scanner axis. However, the geometrical representation of a scanner provided by STIR is a cylinder made of rings of individual crystals equally distributed in axial and transaxial directions. The data of realistic scanners are projected onto such virtual scanners prior to image reconstruction. This results in reduced quality of the reconstructed image. In this study, we implemented the above-described block geometry into the STIR library, permitting the image reconstruction without the interpolation step. In order to evaluate the difference in image quality, we performed Monte Carlo simulation studies of three different scanner designs: two scanners with multiple crystals per block and one with a single crystal per block. Simulated data were reconstructed using the standard STIR method and the newly implemented block geometry. RESULTS: Visual comparison between the images reconstructed by the two models for the block-type scanners shows that the new implementation enhances the image quality to the extent that the results before normalization correction are comparable with those after normalization correction. The simulation result of a uniform cylinder shows that the coefficient of variation decreases from 25.8% to 20.9% by using the new implementation in STIR. Spatial resolution is enhanced resulting in a lower partial loss of intensity in sources of small size, e.g., the spill-over ratio for spherical sources of 1.8 mm diameter is 0.19 in the block and 0.34 in the cylindrical model. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate a significant improvement for the new model in comparison with the old one which mapped the polygonal geometry into a cylinder. The new implementation was tested and is available for use via the library of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

Determination of the strong coupling constant α s m Z from measurements of the total cross section for top-antitop-quark production.

We present a determination of the strong coupling constant α s m Z using inclusive top-quark pair production cross section measurements performed at the LHC and at the Tevatron. Following a procedure first applied by the CMS Collaboration, we extract individual values of α s m Z from measurements by different experiments at several centre-of-mass energies, using QCD predictions complete in NNLO perturbation theory, supplemented with NNLL approximations to all orders, and suitable sets of parton distribution functions. The determinations are then combined using a likelihood-based approach, where special emphasis is put on a consistent treatment of theoretical uncertainties and of correlations between various sources of systematic uncertainties. Our final combined result is α s m Z = 0 . 1177 - 0.0036 + 0.0034 .