Virtual Conference on Applied Radiation Metrology (vCARM)

Virtual CARM is the latest in a series of conferences run by NPL for the nuclear metrology community, bringing together expertise from areas including nuclear medicine, the nuclear industry, manufacturers, radioanalytical laboratories and academia. The meeting is a great opportunity to keep up-to-date on progress in nuclear metrology sphere and to network with colleagues across a wide range of sectors.

The virtual Nuclear Medicine Metrology Meeting will hold daily sessions dedicated to recent advances in nuclear medicine and the underpinning measurement challenges. The topics include medical radiochemistry and production, development of standards, imaging, dosimetry and artificial intelligence.

vCARM will also include sessions on nuclear decay data, radiological characterisation, metrology for fusion and high energy neutron fields. A session will also be dedicated to current and future international metrology challenges with input from multiple NMI’s.

Triskem International will be running a virtual user group meeting on developments in radiochemical separation applications, and there will be a session dedicated to the development of a National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF) for next generation characterisation technologies. vCARM will also incorporate meetings of the Ionising Radiation Metrology Forum (IRMF) and the UK Nuclear Science Forum (UKNSF).

Draft agenda and timings are listed below. Please register for all the sessions you would like to attend. Links will be sent for each individual session before the conference begins.

A provisional agenda can be seen below.

A final agenda will be sent out to all registered delegates on 2nd November.

Monday 23rd November

09.00-16.00 UK Nuclear Science Forum

Chair: Robert Mills (NNL)

10.00-12.00 Carbon-14 Metrology

Chair: Steven Bell (NPL)

Ray Cooke (Pharmaron)

Use of C-14 in drug development

NERC

Novel AMS techniques

Angelina Wenger (University of Bristol)

Atmospheric radiocarbon measurements to quantify CO2 emissions in the UK

14.00-15.30 Medical Radiochemistry and Production

Chair: Andrew Fenwick (NPL)

Elisa Napoli (University of Oslo)

Pb-212 Production and Activity Determination

Ferid Haddid (Arronax)

A versatile tool for the production of non-standard medical radionuclides

Thierry Stora (CERN)

CERN-MEDICIS, non-conventional radioisotopes for medical research

Ben Webster (NPL)

Use of extraction chromatography for the purification of terbium isotopes for use in nuclear medicine

Ross Allen (University of Birmingham/NPL)

Title TBC

Tuesday 24th November

10.00-12.00 High Energy Neutron Fields

Chair: Neil Roberts (NPL)

Elisa Pirovano (PTB)

Measurement of the U-235 neutron-induced fission cross section at high energies

Peane Maleka (iThemba)

iThemba facility: past work and future plans

Fabio Pozzi (CERN)

CERF facility: past work and future plans

Marco Caresana (Politecnico di Milano)

EURADOS WG11

10.00-12.00 National Nuclear Users Facility EXACT Radiochemistry Working Group

Chair: Phil Warwick (University of Southampton)

13.00-17.00 Triskem User Group Meeting

Chair: Steffan Happel (Triskem International)

Steffen Happel (Triskem International)

Welcome

Aude Bombard (Triskem International)

News Radioanalysis and Decontamination

Mirela Vasile (SCK.CEN)

Investigation of the AMP-PAN resin for determination of Cs-137 in sea water samples

Phil Warwick/Alexander Correia Cabrita Margarido Tribolet (University of Southampton)

Rapid screening of radioactive wastes using test stick technology

Nora Vajda (RadAnal)

Determination of uranium, plutonium and americium in soil and sediment by a sequential separation procedure using a single DGA column

Ari Lehmusvuori (Hidex)

Extraction chromatography automation with Hidex Q-ARE 100 instrument

Phil Warwick (Raddec International)

Rapid screening of radioactive wastes using test stick technology

Stefan Wagner (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU))

Rapid determination of Sr and Pb isotope ratios in soil using passive samplers with in situ matrix separation

Brandon Mahon (James Cook University)

High-throughput element purification for upscaled applications of isotope analyses in medicine, ore exploration and beyond

Ben Russell (NPL)

Optimisation of LN resin for lanthanide separation in nuclear medicine applications

Izabela Cieszykowska (Polatom)

Separation of Tc-99m from low specific activity Mo-99 using TK 202 resin

Karla Olguin (Simon Fraser University)

Production and Purification of Titanium-45 for Positron Emission Tomography Imaging

Steffen Happel (Triskem International)

News Radiopharmacy and other on-going R&D

14.00-15.30 Medical Standards and Nuclear Data

Chair: Andrew Robinson (NPL)

Denis Bergeron (NIST)

Realization, comparison, and dissemination of NIST activity standards for medical radionuclides

Andrew Fenwick (NPL)

Zr-89 from primary standards to primary care

Richard Fernandez (Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust)

Performing radionuclide calibrator QC in a busy Nuclear Medicine department: Logistical & Technical challenges

Wednesday 25th November

10.00-12.00 Advances in Nuclear Data

Chair: Paddy Regan (NPL)

Robert Mills (NNL and University of Manchester)

Current UK and International Requirements for Nuclear Data to support industrial application development

Sandrine Courtin, (University of Strasbourg, France)

The determination of the C-12 + C-12 fusion cross-section of relevance to nuclear astrophysics.

Matthias Rudigier (TU Darmstadt, Germany)

Applications of Nuclear Fast-timing Spectroscopy for new Nuclear Data Measurements

Caterina Michelagnoli (ILL-Grenoble)

Gd-106(n,g) Capture reaction experiments and the FIPPS array at ILL-Grenoble

Mark Griffiths (University of Birmingham)

Reducing uncertainty in the atomic mass of Rhenium-190

Andrew Mistry (GSI)

Nuclear decay data and identification of the heaviest elements at GSI

13.00-14.30 Nuclear Medicine Imaging

Chair: Kelley Ferreira (NPL)

John Dickson (UCLH)

Current trends in quantitative SPECT

Ian Armstrong (Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust)

Current trends in quantitative PET

Andrew Robinson (NPL)

Uncertainty estimation for quantified nuclear medicine imaging

15.00-16.30 International Metrology

Chair: Steven Judge (BIPM)

Martyn Sené (NPL, CCRI President)

The Future of Ionising Radiation Metrology

Steven Judge (BIPM)

Recent developments at BIPM

Debbie van der Merwe and Paula Toroi (IAEA)

The IAEA/WHO SSDL Network activities

Brian Zimmerman (NIST) and Andrew Robinson (NPL)

Title TBC

Stephen Giblin (NPL)

Title TBC

Thursday 26th November

09.00-16.00 Ionising Radiation Metrology Forum

Chair: Louise Smethurst (BAE Systems), Simon Threadingham (DSTL)

Simon Threadingham (DSTL)

Dispersibility Statement and what to do with Sources passed the Manufacturer’s recommended working Life

Pete Burgess (Radiation Metrology Ltd)

GM tubes versus PiN diodes for gamma measurement

Michael Iwatschenko-Borho (Thermo Fisher Scientific)

On the benefits of using primordial isotopes for quantitative function checks of sensitive beta and gamma instruments in the field

Shaun Marriott (BAE Systems)

MGPG No. 49 and establishing Working Group for MGPG No. 30

Chris Hutson (University of Bristol)

Diamond detectors for very high gamma dose rate measurement

10.00-12.00 Metrology for Fusion

Chair: Steven Bell and Mike Bunce (NPL), UKAEA

Session Speakers TBC

10.00-12.00 Reference Material and PTE Development

Chair: Elsje van Es (NPL)

Session Speakers TBC

14.00-15.30 Molecular Radiotherapy Dosimetry and Beyond

Chair: Daniel Deidda (NPL)

Ana Denis-Bacelar (NPL) / Alex Vergara (INSERM)

OpenDose: open access resources for nuclear medicine dosimetry

Jan Taprogge (Royal Marsden Hospital NHS FT and The Institute of Cancer Research)

Multi-centre clinical trials involving dosimetry for molecular radiotherapy

Samantha Terry (Kings College London)

Challenges of going back to radiobiology basics in molecular radiotherapy

13.30-16.30 Metrology for Decommissioning

Chair: Graham Machin (NPL)

Darrell Morris (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority)

Decommissioning our Nuclear Legacy – Measurement Challenges

Ian Wheeler (Sellafield Ltd)

Importance of Metrology to Storage of Special Nuclear Materials at Sellafield

Paul Murray (University of Strathclyde)

Image, Video and Hyperspectral Data Analysis for Enhanced Nuclear Inspection

Peter Ivanov (NPL)

In-situ metrology for decommissioning nuclear facilities: The main outcomes of MetroDECOM2 project

Rob Simpson (NPL)

Metrological thermal imaging developments for nuclear decommissioning

Edmund Dickinson and Sophie Zhang (NPL)

Modelling of crack electrochemistry and measurement of crack growth in stainless steels used for nuclear waste containment

Nick McCormick (NPL)

The use of optical imaging for monitoring civil engineering structures

Friday 27th November

10.00-12.00 Applications for decommissioning, forensics and environmental monitoring

Chair: Hibaaq Mohamud (NPL)

Dave Jenkins (University of York)

Development of flexible silicon detectors for pipe decommissioning

Giles Edwards (University of Manchester)

Development of Novel Instrumentation for Matrix Independent Ultra-trace Detection and Quantitation of Radionuclides using Colinear Resonance Ionisation Spectroscopy

Lee Evitts (Bangor University)

Utilizing neutronics modelling to predict the presence of Th in a standard PWR with UO2 fuel

Simon Woodbury (National Nuclear Laboratory)

Introduction to the Nuclear Mass Spectrometry User Group

University of Liverpool (speaker TBC)

Assessing nanoparticle populations in historic nuclear waste

14.00-15.30 Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging

Chair: Ana Denis-Bacelar (NPL)

Daniel McGowan (Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University of Oxford)

National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI) and Deep Learning PET/CT Image Enhancement

Andrew Reader, (Kings College London)

Artificial intelligence in image reconstruction for nuclear medicine

Ignacio Partarrieu (NPL)

Assessing the generalisability of the radiomics method