News and Announcements

Dr. Alexey Ivanov (Institute for Scintillation Materials - NAS Ukraine) is the winner of the iPod Touch, drawn from all of the participants at the Conference who completed the Online Questionnaire

First Place Winner ($500+Certificate):
N13-232: J. L. Dolan, M. Flaska, S. A. Pozzi, D. L. Chichester, Comparison of Passive Measurements on Well-Described Mixed-Oxide Fuel Pins for Nuclear Safeguards Applications

Second Place Winner ($500+Certificate):
N11-1: S. Duarte Pinto, I. Brock, E. David, L. Ropelewski, M. van Stenis, H. Taureg, R. de Oliveira: Spherical GEMs for Parallax-Free X-Ray Imaging

Third Place Winner (Certificate):
N14-4: S. L. Bellinger, W. J. McNeil, D. S. McGregor, Variant Designs and Characteristics of Improved Microstructured Solid-State Neutron Detectors

Fourth Place Winner (Certificate):
N25-163: G. Ichikawa, S. Kawasaki, S. Komamiya, Y. Kamiya, T. Sanuki, H. M. Shimizu, M. Hino, M. Kitaguchi: A CCD-based Pixel Detector with Micron Spatial Resolution for Ultra Cold Neutrons

We are pleased to announce the selected papers for the 2009 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference Student Paper Award:

First Place ($500 prize + certificate) goes to:
S. St. James, J. Zhou, J. Qi, S.R. Cherry from UC Davis, USA, for poster M09-125 entitled:
'ZIPI: a Single Detector Insert to Locally Improve the Sensitivity and Spatial Resolution of Small Animal PET'

Second Place ($500 prize + certificate) goes to:
P.D. Olcott, H. Peng, C.S. Levin from Stanford University, USA, for poster M13-6 entitled:
'Cross-strip capacitive multiplexing and electro-optical coupling for silicon photomultiplier arrays for PET detectors'

Third Place (certificate) goes to:
A. Ferrero, KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, J.K. Poon, R.D. Badawi, UC Davis, USA,
for poster M13-348 entitled:
'Characterization of the Scatter Fraction Arising from Different Sized Objects - a Simulation Study'

Fourth Place (certificate) goes to:
V. Keerman, S. Vandenberghe, J.De Beenhouwer, R. Van Holen, S.Staelens, Gent University-IBBT-IBiTech, Belgium; V. Schultz, T. Solf, Philips Research Europe, Germany, for poster M13-252 entitled:
'Scatter Effects of MR Components in PET-MR Inserts'

Fifth Place (worthy mention) goes to:
S.H. Maramraju, S.D. Smith, S. Rescia, S.S. Junnarkar, B. Ravindranath, S. Stoll, M. Purschke, D. Schulz, S.S. Southekal, W. Lenz, J.F. Pratte, P. Vaska, C.S. Woody, D. J. Schlyer from Stony Brook University, USA, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA, and Universite de Sherbrooke, Canada, for poster M05-247 entitled:
'Simultaneous acquisition of PET/MR images of small animals at 9.4 T'

Sixth Place (worthy mention) goes to:
Y. Lin, Q. Li, R. Leahy, from University of Southern California, USA, for poster M09-44 entitled:
'Kinetic Parameter Estimation for a Heterogeneous Tumor Model'

An international panel of judges selected these papers from over 100 entries during the 2009 IEEE NSS-MIC meeting.

With best regards,

Ramsey Badawi – MIC Chair
Craig Levin - MIC Deputy Chair

There has been some problems with individuals from the National Laboratories and other government institutions getting the government rate at the conference hotel. As of 24 August there are still rooms available at the government rate. If you are having difficulty please supply the reservation agent at the Hilton with the code IEG for the IEEE NSS/MIC conference.

This year's IEEE NSS/MIC meeting will host the workshop on High Performance Medical Imaging (HPMI), www.hpmi2009.org, responding to the recently emerging opportunities to use commodity hardware (CBE, CPU, FPGA, GPU, Larrabee, etc.) for accelerating image reconstruction, image restoration and image analysis.

Due to numerous requests we decided to extend the deadline for abstract submission by two weeks. The new deadline is July 25 (two weeks from now). Scientific papers, reports on promising works in progress as well as overview papers are highly welcome.

Please note that HPMI provides student travel grants as well as hardware awards. Please see "Awards & Grants" at www.hpmi2009.org for further details.

Beginning 12 January 2009, all nationals and citizens of Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries who plan to travel to the U.S. for temporary business or pleasure for 90 days or less will be required by law to obtain travel authorization prior to initiating travel to the United States. This authorization can be obtained online through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), a free Internet application administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland security.

For additional information about the ESTA please visit
http://www.cbp.gov/esta.

Travelers from countries not in the VWP are still required to obtain a Visa upon entry into the United States.

Online application form for the Trainee Grant and the newly established 'Valentin T. Jordanov Radiation Instrumentation Travel Grant' is now available through the "Awards & Grants" page. The deadline for the application is June 1. The applicants' academic advisors / supervisiors must also complete an online letter of recommendation by June 8.