The Nucleic Acid Working Group (NAWG) of the CCQM organised an international interlaboratory study called "fire drill". The aim of this pilot study is to prepare national metrology institutes for the next pandemic. This builds capacity for rapid development of standardised reference methods. The model chosen for this study is an influenza virus. The aim is to develop a reference method for...

The integrity and efficiency of file systems are important in many areas of PTB's work, e.g. in legal metrology. In collaboration with TU Dortmund [1] and TU Berlin [2], PTB has developed an innovative structure for file systems and applied for a patent. This efficient structure is particularly suitable for embedded systems. Patent DE 10 2016 110 479.5 (FLOUDS) became legally binding in March 2024...

In quantitative MRI imaging of the heart, one is often limited to two-dimensional parameter maps with large slice thicknesses due to the low signal-to-noise ratio together with cardiac motion. Simone Hufnagel and coworkers from PTB's Quantitative MRI group 8.13 have now developed a method that allows the acquisition of three-dimensional T1 maps of the entire heart –including the...

Feature importance methods promise to provide a ranking of features according to importance for a given classification task. A wide range of methods exist but their rankings often disagree and they are inherently difficult to evaluate due to a lack of ground truth beyond synthetic datasets. In a recent paper, PTB  together with colleagues from NPL, IMBIH, King´s College, KIT, Fraunhofer HHI and...

The characterization of dispersions, suspensions, and emulsions is important in a wide range of scientific and industrial applications. Samples may consist of different materials with a wide range of particle sizes and concentrations. In a technology transfer project with LUM GmbH, a single particle sizing and counting instrument with a dynamic detection range of ≥6 decades has been developed to...

The separate imaging of fat and water rich tissue is a frequent objective in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). An efficient solution is provided by the Dixon technique where both compartments are excited simultaneously and the signals are later separated based on their different temporal evolution. At the 'ultrahigh' MRI field strength of 7T, the frequency shift between fat and water protons is...

Research work at PTB is concerned with the analysis, modelling and performance optimisation of energy states in mobile embedded systems. The approach is also transferable to other IT systems, such as data centres.

Mobile devices have become an integral part of communication, business and social interactions. The energy consumption of such systems is constantly increasing due to the ever-expanding...

The WELMEC Working Group 7 "Software" [1] of the European Cooperation in Legal Metrology (WELMEC) [2] met online for its 29th meeting on 28 February 2024. The working group is chaired by PTB's Division 8.5 "Metrological IT".

WELMEC Working Group 7 "Software" develops technical interpretations of the essential requirements of the European Measuring Instruments Directive (MID) and incorporates...

Last fall, the research paper "Wirelessly interfacing sensor-equipped implants and MR scanners for improved safety and imaging" by Berk Silemek, Lukas Winter, and colleagues was published in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (MRM). This article was now chosen as an MRM Highlights Pick "… because they openly shared design files and software for the MRI implant sensor they developed" (see gitlab1.ptb...

An independent international group of researchers from academics and national agencies formed a dedicated task group within the American Association of Physicists in Medicine to identify key image quality characteristics and objective test methods for macroscopic fluorescence-guided surgery (FGS). The minimum set of measurements considered important for basic device performance are image sharpness,...