On behalf of the Emission Tomography Standardization Initiative (ETSI) leadership, we are very excited to announce the 5th ETSI Hackathon, which will take place on November 15–16, 2026, in hybrid format at Hotel Saray in Granada, Spain.
The 5th hackathon event of ETSI will support both in-person participation, which is strongly encouraged, and remote participation. The event is organized by the ETSI Consortium Leadership Team with the valued support of the Collaborative Computational Project in Synergistic Reconstruction for Biomedical Imaging (CCP SyneRBI) and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), including the Physics, Instrumentation and Data Sciences Advisory Committee (PIDSC).
Location and Format
The event will be held on Sunday, November 15, and Monday, November 16, 2026, at Hotel Saray in Granada, Spain, located in front of the Granada Conference Centre, within walking distance of the city center and approximately 12 miles from Granada Airport.
The event is scheduled for the days immediately after the 2026 IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD meeting in Granada to facilitate in-person participation by IEEE MIC attendees already present in the city at that time, while also supporting remote participation for colleagues who cannot travel to Spain.
Registration
Registration is free but required for both in-person and remote participation.
Registration link:
https://forms.gle/inQBCd1aHf3VasUZ6
Event webpage:
https://etsinitiative.org/5th-etsi-hackathon-nov-15-16-2026-hybrid/
All important instructions for attending the hackathon in person or remotely, including online meeting links, will be sent directly to registered participants. Registration is therefore a prerequisite for participation.
All hackathon activities, including lunches and the group dinner, will be free for registered participants. Transportation and hotel accommodation are not included.
We look forward to welcoming both returning members of the ETSI developer community and new participants interested in emission tomography raw data standardization, PET list-mode data processing, open-source software, scanner data conversion, and practical validation of PETSIRD.
Objectives
The main objectives of the 5th ETSI Hackathon include:
- developing converters from proprietary or prototype PET list-mode data formats to PETSIRD and validating them with real experimental phantom and clinical data;
- expanding PETSIRD input/output interfaces for open-source reconstruction packages such as CASToR, PyTomography, STIR and Yale Reconstruction Tool;
- building automated validation tools for PETSIRD data;
- designing PET acquisition protocols for experimental phantom and clinical test data;
- maintaining and extending the current Monte Carlo GATE ROOT-to-PETSIRD converter and related in-silico validation workflows;
- updating list-mode analysis and operations use cases, including count statistics, splitting, merging, sub-sampling, gating, and physiological signal extraction;
- updating analytic simulation use cases to generate PETSIRD data.
Participants are also welcome to propose additional use cases before or during the hackathon. Please send yur suggestions or inquiries to the organizing committee below.
Organizing Committee
Hackathon Chairs: Nicolas A. Karakatsanis and Kris Thielemans
General Organizing Committee: ETSI Leadership Consortium
We are very much looking forward to another exciting and productive ETSI Hackathon and hope to see many of you in Granada or online in November 2026.
Emission Tomography Standardization Initiative (ETSI) 