1st ETSI Hackathon, November 13-14th, 2023, Vancouver, Canada (after IEEE NSS/MIC conference)

Organizers: ETSInitiative 1st hackathon is supported by PIDSC of SNMMI with the help of CCP SyneRBI and the local 2023 IEEE NSS/MIC organizers.

Participants: 1st ETSI Hackathon Developers Team

Location: Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Time: November 13-14th (Monday and Tuesday right after 2023 IEEE NSS/MIC meeting)

Registration Info: The event is free to attend. The registration deadline is on October 20th. Follow the link below to register! Can’t wait to see you at Vancouver!

Overview

The first hackathon event of the Emission Tomography Standardization Initiative (ETSI) will be held on November 13-14th in Vancouver, Canada, right after the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference taking place at the same city a few days earlier (November 4-11th, 2023) .

The time and location were chosen to facilitate participation of attendees of the IEEE NSS/MIC meeting with an interest in the standardized usage of emission tomography raw data. Other participants are highly welcomed too!

If you would like further information, please contact Kris Thielemans and Nicolas Karakatsanis.

Sponsorship

Registration Cost: The 1st ETSI hackathon is free to attend thanks to our sponsors!

• Local arrangements, catering and group dinners are funded by CCP SyneRBI
• UK participants can apply for funding for hotel + 50% travel via CCP SyneRBI
• For travel and subsistence (T&S) funding for non-UK participants, please apply via the registration site
• Currently confirmed additional sponsors:

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors

Hackathon Program

Start: Monday 09:30 – End: Tuesday 16:30

Monday morning: 09:30-12:30

1. How will this hackathon run? (09:30)
2. PETSIRD general overview (10:00)
3. Yardl demo (10:30)
4. PETSIRD and Yardl status (11:00)
5. Use cases (suggestions & examples) (11:30)
6. Discussion on targets for subgroup (12:00)

Lunch break (12:30-13:30)

• Group lunch (on-site, discussion on subgroup allocation) (12:30)

Monday afternoon (13:30-17:30)

6. Subgroup formation (13:30)
7. Software set-up (hands-on) (13:45)
8. Work in subgroups (14:15)
9. Progress report after first day (17:00)

Monday evening (17:30-20:30) 

• Group dinner (off-site, 17:30)

Tuesday morning (09:00-12:30)

1. Light breakfast (09:00)
2. Recap of previous day activities (09:30)
3. Resume work in subgroups (09:45)
4. Progress Report (11:45)

Lunch Break (12:15-13:15)

• Group lunch (on-site, 12:15)

Tuesday afternoon (13:15-16:30)

1. Resume work in subgroups (13:15)
2. Final progress report (15:30)
3. Next steps and conclusion of the event (16:00)
4. End of event & farewell (16:30)

Tuesday evening (17:00-20:00)

• Group dinner (off-site, 17:30)

Objectives

• raise awareness and educate participants regarding the need for raw data standardization in nuclear emission tomography imaging (PET, SPECT, planar, etc.), the mission of ETSI, and the preliminary features and elements of ETSI’s PET raw data format standard known as PETSIRD.
• facilitate the implementation of a first set of validated code libraries, based on the Yardl-generated code, to demonstrate important basic use cases of the ETSI’s proposed PETSIRD format for the standardization of PET raw data.

A document report summarizing the progress and products made from the hackathon will be compiled and announced by ETSInitiative after the completion of the event.

Use Cases

One of the main objectives of the 1st ETSI hackathon is to facilitate the development of simple yet effective software tools demonstrating some of the most characteristic use cases of the proposed standardized ETSI formats for emission tomography raw data. In this preliminary phase, this very first ETSI hackathon event will focus on developing and validating appropriate user interfaces specifically for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) raw data (PETSIRD format).

Thus, in this hackathon priority will be given in the design and implementation of streamlined and robust coding tools to build a basic user interface of the ETSI’s PETSIRD standardized format, including:

• the extraction from the PETSIRD raw data of primary information and basic statistics (e.g. total counts and counts per unit time, histograms, timing and energy info, etc.)
• the development of PET raw data convertors to enable (i) smooth transitions from proprietary vendor-specific or simulated data formats to the ETSI’s standardized PETSIRD format as well as (ii) the reading, processing and writing of PETSIRD data using widely adopted in our research community open-source software, such as the STIR and CASToR reconstruction libraries
• basic PETSIRD data processing tools, such as data-driven splitting and merging of raw data streams and data rebinning into user-defined time or energy frames

In future, the publicly available code libraries produced from this event will be translated for the development of expanded user interfaces for the PETSIRD format as well as of similar user interfaces for other types of emission tomography raw data.

Material

Education content, proprietary and ETSI’s PETSIRD demo data repositories, use case exercise descriptions and basic code libraries will be provided as we approach the event date.

Important Information for Registered Attendees

On-site (in-person) attendees

Location: Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, 3^rd floor, room 3402.

• The site is NOT at the conference centre, but at UBC. From the conference centre, this will be about 50 minutes per bus on Monday (which is a holiday). You can use the Vancouver transit planner at https://www.translink.ca/, or any other tool.
• Please arrive on Monday between 9:00 and 9:30am. There will be a light breakfast.
• If you are not going to be there, you need to let us know ASAP.
• If your dinner plans change, we need to know 4 days before the meeting.
• There is free Wifi at UBC (ubcvisitor and presumably eduroam).
• Don’t forget to bring your laptop, charger and lots of enthusiasm!
• Car parking is available (ask for map if you need it)
• Across from Brain Health building on Wesbrook Mall
• Parkade at Strangway building (where Shoppers Drug Mart is)

All (both on-site and on-line) attendees

We strongly advise to create a free GitHub account if you don’t have one yet. See Signing up for a new GitHub account – GitHub Docs.  You will need to have this to use GitHub Codespaces for cloud access. (Advanced users can of course install software on their own machine).

• (Note that if you’re a student or academic staff, you can apply for GitHub Education, which gives you some extra features, but this is not required for this hackathon as far as we know).

We have set-up a Discord server https://discord.gg/YtkF9q3X82. This can be used for communication between participants, e.g. for those in the same sub-group, especially for remote attendees. Join this Discord server if you like. If you need help, use https://support.discord.com/ in the first instance.

You will receive several Teams meeting invites over the next few days. This will be most useful for online attendees of course. In addition, we will share the recordings occasionally.

• Sadly, it looks like we will need to do this by email, as the link to the recording in the Teams chat will likely not work for non-UCL people).
• We will make every effort to have the recordings of the 1st day sessions available several hours before the 2nd day sessions begin in order to facilitate their offline access before the 2nd day for remote attendees in different time zones

We are very much looking forward to this meeting, and hope you are too!

Updates