Roberts Prize for the best paper published in 2012

Abstract

The publishers of Physics in Medicine and Biology (PMB), IOP Publishing, in association with the journal owners, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), jointly award the Roberts prize for the best paper published in PMB during the previous year. The procedure for deciding the winner is a two-stage process. First, a shortlist of contenders is drawn up based on those papers that had the best referees' quality assessments, with a further quality check and endorsement by the Editorial Board. The papers on the shortlist are then reviewed by a specially convened IPEM committee consisting of members with fellow status. This committee reads the shortlisted papers and selects the winner.We have much pleasure in advising readers that the Roberts Prize for the best paper published in 2012 is awarded to Michel Defrise, Ahmadreza Rezaei and Johan Nuyts from the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium for their breakthrough paper that describes how the information needed for attenuation correction in PET imaging can be extracted, to within a constant, from time-of-flight emission data:Time-of-flight PET data determine the attenuation sinogram up to a constant 2012 Phys. Med. Biol. 57 885 Michel Defrise1, Ahmadreza Rezaei2 and Johan Nuyts21Department of Nuclear Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, B-1090 Brussels, Belgium 2Department of Nuclear Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, BelgiumThis paper represents an important and timely contribution to the literature as time-of-flight PET scanners are now offered by several manufacturers. In hybrid PET/CT scanners, the PET attenuation correction, necessary for quantitative reconstruction of the tracer distribution, can be derived directly from the CT data. Sometimes, however, the PET and CT scans may be poorly aligned due to patient motion and other approaches are needed. In addition, hybrid PET/MRI scanners also, have been developed recently, and in these scanners attenuation correction of the PET data is a particularly difficult challenge as there is no direct relationship between MR signal intensity and tissue attenuation for 511 keV photons. This paper offers a possible path forwards for attenuation correction in these circumstances by exploiting consistency conditions in tandem with time-of-flight information and proves under these circumstances that the data for PET attenuation correction can be determined to within a constant.Our congratulations go to these authors. Of course all of the shortlisted papers were of an extremely high standard, and merit recognition by the community. They are listed below in alphabetical order. We also would like to thank the PMB Editorial Board and the IPEM Committee members for their hard work in assessing the papers.Simon R Cherry Editor-in-Chief Jon Ruffle Publisher ReferencesBuhr H, Büermann L, Gerlach M, Krumrey M and Rabus H 2012 Measurement of the mass energy-absorption coefficient of air for x-rays in the range from 3 keV to 60 keV Phys. Med. Biol. 57 8231Chen W, Unkelbach J, Trofimov A, Madden T, Kooy H, Bortfeld T and Craft D 2012 Including robustness in multi-criteria optimization for intensity modulated proton therapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 591Clasie B M, Sharp G C, Seco J, Flanz J B and Kooy H M 2012 Numerical solutions of the gamma index in two and three dimensions Phys. Med. Biol. 57 6981Connell T, Alexander A, Evans M and Seuntjens J 2012 An experimental feasibility study on the use of scattering foil free beams for modulated electron radiotherapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 3259Defrise M, Rezaei A and Nuyts J 2012 Time-of-flight PET data determine the attenuation sinogram up to a constant Phys. Med. Biol. 57 885Dowdell S J, Clasie B, Depauw N, Metcalfe P, Rosenfeld A B, Kooy H M, Flanz J B and Paganetti H 2012 Monte Carlo study of the potential reduction in out-of-field dose using a patient-specific aperture in pencil beam scanning proton therapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 2829Scott A J D, Kumar S, Nahum A E and Fenwick J D 2012 Characterizing the influence of detector density on dosimeter response in non-equilibrium small photon fields Phys. Med. Biol. 57 4461Stam M K, Crijns S P M, Zonnenberg B A, Barendrecht M M, van Vulpen M, Lagendijk J J W and Raaymakers B W 2012 Navigators for motion detection during real-time MRI-guided radiotherapy Phys. Med. Biol. 57 6797Xia T, Alessio A M, De Man B, Manjeshwar R, Asma E and Kinahan P E 2012 Ultra-low dose CT attenuation correction for PET/CT Phys. Med. Biol. 57 309Yamaguchi M et al 2012 Beam range estimation by measuring bremsstrahlung Phys. Med. Biol. 57 2843For more information on this article, see medicalphysicsweb.org