R. Van de Walle

GATE: a simulation toolkit for PET and SPECT.

Monte Carlo simulation is an essential tool in emission tomography that can assist in the design of new medical imaging devices, the optimization of acquisition protocols and the development or assessment of image reconstruction algorithms and correction techniques. GATE, the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission, encapsulates the Geant4 libraries to achieve a modular, versatile, scripted simulation toolkit adapted to the field of nuclear medicine. In particular, GATE allows the description of time-dependent phenomena such as source or detector movement, and source decay kinetics. This feature makes it possible to simulate time curves under realistic acquisition conditions and to test dynamic reconstruction algorithms. This paper gives a detailed description of the design and development of GATE by the OpenGATE collaboration, whose continuing objective is to improve, document and validate GATE by simulating commercially available imaging systems for PET and SPECT. Large effort is also invested in the ability and the flexibility to model novel detection systems or systems still under design. A public release of GATE licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License can be downloaded at http:/www-lphe.epfl.ch/GATE/. Two benchmarks developed for PET and SPECT to test the installation of GATE and to serve as a tutorial for the users are presented. Extensive validation of the GATE simulation platform has been started, comparing simulations and measurements on commercially available acquisition systems. References to those results are listed. The future prospects towards the gridification of GATE and its extension to other domains such as dosimetry are also discussed.

MPEG-21: goals and achievements

MPEG-21 is an open standards-based framework for multimedia delivery and consumption. It aims to enable the use of multimedia resources across a wide range of networks and devices. We discuss MPEG-21s parts, achievements, ongoing activities, and opportunities for new technologies.

Flexible macroblock ordering in H.264/AVC

Abstract H.264/AVC is a new standard for digital video compression jointly developed by ITU-T’s Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC’s Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). Besides the numerous tools for efficient video coding, the H.264/AVC specification defines some new error resilience tools. One of them is flexible macroblock ordering (FMO) which is the main focus of this paper. An in-depth overview is given of the internals of FMO. Experiments are presented that demonstrate the benefits of FMO as an error resilience tool in case of packet loss over IP networks. The flexibility of FMO comes with a certain overhead or cost. A quantitative assessment of this cost is presented for a number of scenarios. FMO can, besides for pure error resilience, also be used for other purposes. This is also addressed in this paper.

Iterative reconstruction algorithms in nuclear medicine

Iterative reconstruction algorithms produce accurate images without streak artifacts as in filtered backprojection. They allow improved incorporation of important corrections for image degrading effects, such as attenuation, scatter and depth-dependent resolution. Only some corrections, which are important for accurate reconstruction in positron emission tomography and single photon emission computed tomography, can be applied to the data before filtered backprojection. The main limitation for introducing iterative algorithms in nuclear medicine has been computation time, which is much longer for iterative techniques than for filtered backprojection. Modern algorithms make use of acceleration techniques to speed up the reconstruction. These acceleration techniques and the development in computer processors have introduced iterative reconstruction in daily nuclear medicine routine. We give an overview of the most important iterative techniques and discuss the different corrections that can be incorporated to improve the image quality.

Reconstruction of MR images from data acquired on a general nonregular grid by pseudoinverse calculation

A minimum-norm least-squares image-reconstruction method for the reconstruction of magnetic resonance images from non-Cartesian sampled data is proposed. The method is based on a general formalism for continuous-to-discrete mapping and pseudoinverse calculation. It does not involve any regridding or interpolation of the data and therefore the methodology differs fundamentally from existing regridding-based methods. Moreover, the method uses a continuous representation of objects in the image domain instead of a discretized representation. Simulations and experiments show the possibilities of the method in both radial and spiral imaging. Simulations revealed that minimum-norm least-squares image reconstruction can result in a drastic decrease of artifacts compared with regridding-based reconstruction. Besides, both in vivo and phantom experiments showed that minimum-norm least-squares image reconstruction leads to contrast improvement and increased signal-to-noise ratio compared with image reconstruction based on regridding. As an appendix, an analytical calculation of the raw data corresponding to the well-known Shepp and Logan software head phantom is presented.

Hex-splines: a novel spline family for hexagonal lattices

This paper proposes a new family of bivariate, nonseparable splines, called hex-splines, especially designed for hexagonal lattices. The starting point of the construction is the indicator function of the Voronoi cell, which is used to define in a natural way the first-order hex-spline. Higher order hex-splines are obtained by successive convolutions. A mathematical analysis of this new bivariate spline family is presented. In particular, we derive a closed form for a hex-spline of arbitrary order. We also discuss important properties, such as their Fourier transform and the fact they form a Riesz basis. We also highlight the approximation order. For conventional rectangular lattices, hex-splines revert to classical separable tensor-product B-splines. Finally, some prototypical applications and experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of hex-splines for handling hexagonally sampled data.

Dipole location errors in electroencephalogram source analysis due to volume conductor model errors

An examination is made of dipole location errors in electroencephalogram (EEG) source analysis, due to not incorporating the ventricular system (VS), omitting a hole in the skull and underestimating skull conductivity. The simulations are performed for a large number of test dipoles in 3D using the finite difference method. The maximum dipole location error encountered, utilising 27 and 53 electrodes is 7.6 mm and 6.1 mm, respectively when omitting the VS, 5.6 mm and 5.2 mm, respectively when neglecting the hole in the skull, and 33.4 mm and 28.0 mm, respectively when underestimating skull conductivity. The largest location errors due to neglecting the VS can be found in the vicinity of the VS. The largest location erros due to omitting a hole can be found in the vicinity of the hole. At these positions the fitted dipoles are found close to the hole. When skull conductivity is underestimated, the dipole is fitted close to the skull-brain border in a radial direction for all test dipoles. It was found that the location errors due to underestimating skull conductivity are typically higher than those found due to neglecting the VS or neglecting a hole in the skull.

Mathematical analysis and experimental investigation of noise in quantitative magnetic resonance imaging applied in polymer gel dosimetry

Abstract In polymer gel dosimetry, the spin–spin relaxation rate R 2=1/ T 2, is related to the absorbed dose that is delivered to a gel phantom by high-energy radiation beams. In a two-points method, R 2 is calculated from two differently T 2-weighted images. In the many-points method, R 2 is calculated by fitting the pixel intensities of a set of differently exponentially T 2-weighted images. An analysis of the influence of noise on the resulting R 2 image may contribute considerably to the enhancement of the accuracy of the dose map. The relation between the noise level in the differently T 2-weighted images and the noise level in the R 2 image is derived mathematically. This relation is dependent on the actual R 2, on the choice of the echo times in the sequences used, and the fitting algorithm. Both a least square fit to the semi-logarithmic T 2-relaxation plot and a maximum-likelihood estimation on the T 2-relaxation plot were investigated. It was found that dose images obtained from R 2 images through calibration will contain noise that originates from the noise in the R 2 image and from the probability distribution of the coefficients of the calibration curve. We present a method for optimizing the echo times in order to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the resulting R 2 image for both methods and for both fitting algorithms. The mathematical considerations on the SNR as presented, can also be applied on other data sets which display a mono-exponential behavior (e.g. diffusion measurements, T 1 relaxation).

Architectures for Fast Transcoding of H.264/AVC to Quality-Scalable SVC Streams

The scalable extension of H.264/AVC (SVC) was recently standardized, and offers scalability at a minor penalty in rate-distortion efficiency when compared to single-layer H.264/AVC coding. In SVC, a scaled version of the original video sequence can easily be extracted by dropping layers from the stream. However, most of the video content nowadays is still produced in a single-layer format. While decoding and reencoding is a possible solution to introduce scalability in the existing bitstreams, this is an approach which requires a tremendous amount of time and effort. In this paper, we show that transcoding can be used to intelligently derive scalable bitstreams from existing single-layer streams. We focus on SNR scalability, and introduce techniques that are able to create multiple quality layers in the bitstreams. We also discuss bitstream rewriting from SVC to H.264/AVC, and examine how our newly proposed architectures can benefit from the changes that were introduced for bitstream rewriting. Architectures with different rate distribution flexibility and computational complexity are discussed. Rate-distortion performance of transcoding is shown to be comparable to that of reencoding at a fraction of the time needed for the latter.

On the relationship between interfacial defects and Schottky barrier height in Ag, Au, and Al/n‐GaAs contacts

The variation of the Schottky barrier height in Ag, Au, and Al/n‐GaAs contacts has been investigated as a function of the annealing temperature of the GaAs substrate. Angle resolved x‐ray photoemission spectroscopy measurements show that the substrate surface changes from As‐rich into Ga‐rich over the applied annealing range. Two distinct barrier heights (about 0.85 and 0.65 eV) are found, depending on the metal and the annealing temperature. These values correspond to the Fermi level pinning positions expected for amphoteric defect reactions involving the AsGa and GaAs antisites, respectively. Changes in the barrier height are found at annealing temperatures associated with the removal of these defects.