The LHCb experiment is dedicated to precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of B hadrons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Geneva). The initial configuration and expected performance of the detector and associated systems, as established by test beam measurements and simulation studies, is described.

A novel radioguided surgery (RGS) technique for cerebral tumors using β − radiation is being developed. Checking for a radiotracer that can deliver a β − emitter to the tumor is a fundamental step in the deployment of such a technique. This paper reports a study of the uptake of 90 Y-DOTATOC in meningiomas and high-grade gliomas (HGGs) and a feasibility study of the RGS technique in these types of tumor. Estimates were performed assuming the use of a β − probe under development with a sensitive area 2.55 mm in radius to detect 0.1-mL residuals. Methods: Uptake and background from healthy tissues were estimated on 68 Ga-DOTATOC PET scans of 11 meningioma patients and 12 HGG patients. A dedicated statistical analysis of the DICOM images was developed and validated. The feasibility study was performed using full simulation of emission and detection of the radiation, accounting for the measured uptake and background rate. Results: All meningioma patients but one with an atypical extracranial tumor showed high uptake of DOTATOC. In terms of feasibility of the RGS technique, we estimated that by administering a 3 MBq/kg activity of radiotracer, the time needed to detect a 0.1-mL remnant with 5% false-negative and 1% falsepositive rates is less than 1 s. Actually, to achieve a detection time of 1 s the required activities to administer were as low as 0.2-0.5 MBq/kg in many patients. In HGGs, the uptake was lower than in meningiomas, but the tumor-to-nontumor ratio was higher than 4, which implies that the tracer can still be effective for RGS. It was estimated that by administering 3 mBq/kg of radiotracer, the time needed to detect a 0.1-mL remnant is less than 6 s, with the exception of the only oligodendroma in the sample. Conclusion: Uptake of 90 Y-DOTATOC in meningiomas was high in all studied patients. Uptake in HGGs was significantly worse than in meningiomas but was still acceptable for RGS, particularly if further research and development are done to improve the performance of the β − probe. Radi oguided surgery (RGS) helps the surgeon evaluate the completeness of a tumor resection while minimizing the amount of healthy tissue removed (1). The surgeon is provided with vital and real-time information on the location and extent of the lesion and can assess the resection margins. The technique uses a radiolabeled tracer preferentially taken up by the tumor to discriminate cancerous tissue from healthy organs, as well as a probe (2) sensitive to the emission released by the tracer to identify in real time the targeted tumor focus. The radiopharmaceutical is administered to the patient before surgery.Current clinical applications of RGS are radioimmunoguided surgery for colon cancer (3,4), complete sentinel-node mapping for malignant melanoma (5) and breast cancer (6,7), and detection of parathyroid adenoma (8) and bone tumors (such as osteoid osteoma). There are also clinical studies on applications in neuroendocrine tumors (9,10).Established methods use a combination of a g-emitting tracer with a g-radiation-detec...

This report describes the present status of the detector design for SuperB. It is one of four separate progress reports that, taken collectively, describe progress made on the SuperB Project since the publication of the SuperB Conceptual

Purpose: A radio-guided surgery technique with β − -emitting radiotracers was suggested to overcome the effect of the large penetration of γ radiation. The feasibility studies in the case of brain tumors and abdominal neuro-endocrine tumors were based on simulations starting from PET images with several underlying assumptions. This paper reports, as proof-of-principle of this technique, an ex-vivo test on a meningioma patient. This test allowed to validate the whole chain, from the evaluation * co-first-author † corresponding author, e-mail: riccardo.faccini@roma1.infn.it Results: we obtained a large signal on the bulk tumor (105 cps) and a significant signal on residuals of ∼0.2 ml (28 cps). We also show that simulations predict correctly the observed yields and this allows us to estimate that the healthy tissues would return negligible signals (≈ 1 cps). This test also demonstrated that the exposure of the medical staff is negligible and that among the biological wastes only urine has a significant activity.Conclusions: This proof-of-principle test on a patient assessed that the technique is feasible with negligible background to medical personnel and confirmed that the expectations obtained with Monte Carlo simulations starting from diagnostic PET images are correct.

No abstract