Dear friends and supporters of the USCT data exchange and collaboration project ,

We are pleased to announce our next event:

USCT Reference Database and Platform Panel Discussion at the SPIE Medical Imaging 2018 in Houston (https://spie.org/MI/special-events/Technical-Event)

on Wednesday, 14th February, 5:35 to 7:35 pm.

As the goal of this platform is to exchange knowledge and collaborate on research by granting access to raw data from various scanning systems, defining a standardize data format, and publishing easy-to-use data and code interfaces and reconstruction algorithms, in this panel the following topics will be discussed: standardized data formats, well-defined phantoms for comparison of scanners and reconstruction algorithms, simulation tools and simulated data, and contents of a future USCT challenge.

Sincerely yours,

the USCT data exchange and collaboration team

This year we are organizing the first International Workshop on Medical Ultrasound Tomography (MUST), which will be held from 1 to 3 November 2017 in Speyer, Germany.

With this three-day workshop we would like to bring together the growing ultrasound tomography community, for the purpose of discussing and exchanging new ideas and research results with each other and with researchers from related fields. The workshop will preliminarily host eight invited talks, 30 oral and 11 poster presentations which will cover theory and practical application of image reconstruction and quantitative image-calibration algorithms, signal and image processing, image analysis and image evaluation, system and transducer design and clinical and preclinical applications of ultrasound tomography. Additional dedicated discussion sessions will serve as a platform to exchange ideas and discuss future directions of medical ultrasound tomography.

The preliminary program is available at the workshop website at https://indico.scc.kit.edu/indico/e/MUST

Dear participant of the  Ultrasonic Imaging and Tomography Conference at SPIE Medical Imaging 2017,

Please be reminded of the

panel discussion of the Ultrasound Computed Tomography (USCT) data challenge (https://spie.org/MI/special-events/Technical-Event)

on Tuesday, 14th February, 5 to 7 pm, the night before the ultrasound conference starts.

The long term goal of the USCT data challenge is to build up a free and open reference database and to establish data format and software interfaces to enable simplified academic exchange to drive further development. This challenge aims on applying available image reconstruction algorithms on provided USCT data in order to establish a first interface specification.  In the panel discussion we are planning to discuss the experience of challenge participants and possible future steps towards objectively evaluate and compare USCT reconstruction algorithms and imaging protocols.

Staring Tuesday and throughout the ultrasound conference posters will be presented describing the data sets and experimental setups in detail and show first results of reconstructions. Everyone is invited to participate: so if you would like to add an ‘ad hoc’ poster, just contact Nicole Ruiter or Koen van Dongen, we will try to squeeze you in.

Sincerely yours,

Nicole V. Ruiter*, Koen W.A. van Dongen*, Neb Duric† and Brecht Heyde†

*Organization of USCT data challenge

†Conference chairs

Contact: Nicole.ruiter@kit.edu; K.W.A.vanDongen@tudelft.nl

Today we published the datasets for the USCT data challenge. Two types of data sets are provided:

• Data from a circular 2D system developed at Technical University Delft.
• Data from a full 3D system developed at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Information on how to access the data for participation in the challenge is provided here. Detailed descriptions of both systems will be added shortly.

If you have any questions about the challenge and/or the provided data, feel free to contact the organizers.

Welcome to the USCT data challenge! Today we published the data challenge website. We are looking forward to your contributions!