Programme
- Plenary Sessions
- Oral Sessions
- Intensive Oral/Poster Sessions
- Short Courses
- Workshops
- Industrial Exhibitions
- Companion Program
The final programme is available here.
Plenary Sessions
The Roles and Developments needed for Diagnostics in the ITER Fusion Device
Dr. Michael Walsh (CV) and the ITER Team
Harnessing the power from Fusion on earth is an important and challenging task. Excellent work has been carried out in this area over the years with several demonstrations of the ability to produce power. Now, a new large device is being constructed in the south of France. This is called ITER. ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate a possibility to produce commercial energy from fusion.
This project is now well underway with the many teams working on the construction and completing various aspects of the design. This device will carry up to 15MA of plasma current and produce about 500MW of power, 400MW approximately in high energy neutrons. The typical temperatures of the electrons inside this device are in the region of a few hundred million Kelvin. It is maintained using a magnetic field. This device is pushing several boundaries from those currently existing. As a result of this, several technologies need to be developed or extended. This is especially true for the systems or diagnostics that measure the performance and provide the control signals for this device.
A diagnostic set will be installed on the ITER machine to provide the measurements necessary to control, evaluate and optimize plasma performance in ITER and to further the understanding of plasma physics. These include amongst others, measurements of the plasma shape, temperature, density, impurity concentration, and particle and energy confinement times. The system will comprise about 45 individual measuring systems drawn from the full range of modern plasma diagnostic techniques, including magnetics, lasers, X-rays, neutron cameras, impurity monitors, particle spectrometers, radiation bolometers, pressure and gas analysis, and optical fibres.
These devices will have to be made to work in the new and challenging environment inside the vacuum vessel. These systems will have to cope with a range of phenomena that extend the current knowledge in the Fusion field. One amongst them is the parasitic effect of the neutrons on the while all the performing with great accuracy and precision. The levels of neutral particle flux, neutron flux and neutron fluence will be respectively about 5, 10 and 10,000 times higher than the harshest experienced in today's machines. The pulse length of the fusion reaction or the amount of time the reaction is sustained will be about 100 times longer.
Multimodality imaging based on radiopharmaceuticals - The new standard of the diagnosis in nuclear medicine
Professor Alain Prigent (CV)
Head of the Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine Department - Bicêtre Hospital, APHP
In diagnostic nuclear medicine the mainstream signal is obtained from emitting radionuclides incorporated into molecules (radiophamarceuticals) either for SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) or PET (Positron Emission Tomography).
Imaging healthcare services are increasingly using multimodality, in particular when using radiopharmaceuticals as specific markers of cellular function and molecular biology. SPECT and PET are associated with either computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) within the same hardware system.
Sometimes, and falsely, looked upon as the definitive "one-stop shop" for the whole medical imaging field, multimodality imaging was qualified as "hybrid imaging" and claimed to enable simultaneous diagnostic (anatomical) with CT and functional evaluation with radiopharmaceuticals. In order to support this view, manufacturers began the race in increase of multidetector rows for embedded CT (and rapidly followed by "high field" MRI). Hopefully, workflow/cost and clinical impact in the diagnostic thinking (i.e., clinical utility further than the "nicer" image) validated the need of cross-sectional imagers good enough to localize and quantify the radiopharmaceutical distribution.
A crucial advantage of PET/CT and SPECT/CT is that nuclear imaging methods are presented in a format known to every clinician. The use of an anatomical image for functional imaging further improved the acceptance of and confidence in nuclear medicine.
Their second essential advantage is the unique possibility of quantification of the radiopharmaceutical uptake (either in organs or tumours). For SPECT, using the attenuation map and the resolution characteristics of CT allows to correct physical artefacts. Thus both PET/CT and PET/CT allows the three-dimensional visualization of radioactivity within the human body and is widely used for clinical purposes (characterization of a tumour as benign or malignant, treatment efficacy,...).
Although the correlative information from PET and MRI (not only anatomical but also functional with some sequences) is potentially promising in research, the clinical benefit of a PET/MRI in routine is still far to be demonstrated.
Consequently, as illustrated by the presentation of clinical examples, multimodality imaging technology is nowadays the new standard for scintigraphy, the diagnostic component of nuclear medicine
Novel real-time 3D radiological mapping solution for ALARA maximization, D&D assessments and radiological management
Dr. Massimo Morichi
AREVA Group - Corporate Senior Vice President
Good management of dismantling and decontamination (D&D) operations and activities is requiring safety, time saving and perfect radiological knowledge of the contaminated environment as well as optimization for personnel dose and minimization of waste volume. In the same time, Fukushima accident has imposed a stretch to the nuclear measurement operational approach requiring in such emergency situation: fast deployment and intervention, quick analysis and fast scenario definition.
AREVA, as return of experience from his activities carried out at Fukushima and D&D sites has developed a novel multi-sensor solution as part of his D&D research, approach and method, a system with real-time 3D photorealistic spatial radiation distribution cartography of contaminated premises.
The system may be handheld or mounted on a mobile device (robot, drone, e.g). In this paper, we will present our current development based on a SLAM technology (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) and integrated sensors and detectors allowing simultaneous topographic and radiological (dose rate and/or spectroscopy) data acquisitions. This enabling technology permits 3D gamma activity cartography in real-time.
A quest of half a century
Prof. Em. Walter Van Doninck (CV)
Vice President of the CERN Council, Professor at VUB
The Standard Model of Particles and Fields is a crown juwel of modern Physics. It was developed over the last 50 years. I will guide the audience through some of the milestones with emphasis on the experimental aspects. From the discovery of weak Neutral Currents via the precision measurements at the Large Electron Positron Collider to the experimental discovery of a Brout-Englert-Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
