Background of ERDIT Prof. Christer Fröjdh Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden

1. Background of ERDIT Prof. Christer Fröjdh Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden

2. How did it start? • Research on radiation detectors is truly multidisciplinary and does not fit into any call of the framework programmes of the European Union • There are several common challenges in detector development but the different communities tend to work on their own. • Each community is too small to influence the policies of the European Commission and the national funding agencies • There is strong tension between different organisations and different organisation networks.

3. The idea • Create a bottom-up network with leading scientists in the field of radiation detection and imaging to exchange information between different application areas and to promote research in relevant fields at the European Commission and national funding agencies.

4. ERDIT Mission statement • The mission of the European Radiation Detection and Imaging Technology Platform is to promote the research on radiation detectors and imaging at European level. The aim of this platform is to synergistically implement a common strategy across research infrastructures involving research laboratories, academy and industry, which would benefit fundamental science, promote innovation in industry and would feed into the crucial European societal challenges. This would be implemented through a process of guidance, prioritization and promotion of research, innovation and education with respects to fundamental science principles and contemporary benefit to society and growth of global competitiveness of European industries

5. background • The demand for advanced radiation detectors will increase dramatically in the next few years. A number of large research institutes including CERN, GSI, ESRF, XFEL, ITER, JET, ESS and others are either being built or are planning for substantial upgrades before 2020. In addition the concept of quantum imaging is used for materials testing in industry and has gained interest from the medical imaging industry with an expected annual market exceeding 10 billion euros. The challenge addressed by this Platform concerns both the development of high performance detectors and the ability to produce them by European industries. The aim is to create an academy-industry platform to address the key scientific challenges for development of high-performance radiation detectors, to coordinate the research on radiation detectors with competitive edge at European level. Strong interaction between leading scientists in academy, industry and end-users is necessary to remove overlaps in research topics, increase piloting of new ideas and facilitate access to national and international R&D funding. • There is a common understanding that the development of radiation detectors is lagging behind and that the lack of high performance detectors is the limiting factors in many applications. An explanation is that the research is truly multidisciplinary and that it does not fit into any of the major research programs. There are only a few cross program calls where this type of research is possible. It is now time to consider whether the various involved communities would be interested in joining forces to establish a Technology Platform at European level. This would be done together with industries to raise the awareness of the common needs and to promote a detector roadmap for future research and innovation.

6. The Erdit platform will.. • Collect information on important challenges for the development of high performance radiation detectors • Collect information on the shortcomings of the current detectors as seen by the applications • Work on common strategies for research and development in Europe. • Develop technology roadmaps for radiation detector development • Raise the awareness of the needs for radiation detectors and their impact on societal challenges • Promote the field of research, education, innovation and knowledge transfer at national and European level

7. The platform will not .. • Propose and run its own research and development projects • Administrate funding for research and development and fund project run by the members • Be involved in the selection of projects funded by other bodies • Prevent any member from implementing its own strategies • We encourage members or groups of members to propose and run research projects mentioning the link to ERDIT thus promoting the field of research in an international perspective.

8. What is erdit? • A network to exchange information concerning research on radiation detection and imaging and to promote the field of research with the European Commission and national funding agencies. • Is it a technology platform? Not so far. Technology platforms should be industry driven. They could also be recognised by the European Commission. • A COST Action? That is one thing that we are working on… • A lobbying platform? Not yet but I am running one in Sweden with support from the Scientific Council and the national Innovation Agency.

9. Erdit activities so far • Initial meeting at CERN in April 2013 • Collect information from the different fields • Discuss the objectives of ERDIT • Second meeting at IAEA in October 2013 • Present the results of the survey on common challenges • Information from the European Commission on Horizon 2020 • Discussion on a proposal for a COST action • Third meeting in Freiburg in April 2014 • First open meeting, previous meetings were by invitation only • First meeting with industrial partners • Proposing further actions from the network

10. The national radiation detection and imaging platform in Sweden

11. status • Supported by the Swedish Innovation agency through a call for proposals for lobbying platform to support Swedish research priorities in Horizon 2020 • Supported by the Scientific Council as a planning grant for a new national infrastructure on radiation detection and imaging • Should include scientists and industry to promote research, development and production of radiation detectors and systems based on radiation detection and imaging.

12. Actvities so far • First meeting in Stockholm in November 2013 followed by a survey sent to the participating companies. Ten out of 17 companies responded. • Second meeting in Stockholm in January 2014. Presentation of the results of the survey and discussion in the organisation of the platform • Third meeting will be held this Thursday • Presentation of the status of the ERDIT network • Discussion on the strategy for the platform • Presentation of a national initiative on an infrastructure for test and demonstration of radiation detectors and applications • Links to the national Innovation Area in Electronics

13. Some questions for erdit • The detector is one component in the system. How do we take system and application aspects into account? • Which are the most important areas where we should take action? • What makes ERDIT attractive for industry? • What kind of support can we get from the large institutes?

14. COST action on radiation detection and imaging

15. STATUS • A COST proposal for the activities of the ERDIT network was submitted in November 2013 • The proposal passed stage 1 of the evaluation with very mixed results • The proposal did not pass stage 2 of the evaluation • The total score was 52/70 • There are relevant comments from the evaluators • There is reason to submit a new proposal on November 8 provided that • Members of ERDIT read the proposal and contribute to the text • Scientists from several countries sign the proposal • European industry gets more involved in the proposal and signs as well

16. A.1.1 State of the Art • The proposal provides a thorough wrap-up concerning the current state-of-the-art in the field of radiation detection and imaging. The strength of the proposal lies in its identification of common goals for a number of significant applications and the holistic coverage of all relevant layers from sensor to packaging. • The construction of an "optimal" detector requires a multidisciplinary know-how to cope with the different aspects of its realization, including the optimization of the different components and of the construction procedures as well described in the proposal. If it is true that detectors for the different radiations have several similarities, it has also to be considered that detectors for even small different energy ranges might have dramatic different requirements (simple example in medical imaging: detection of 10 keV X-rays or 100 keV, or 1000 keV have completely different requirements in terms of material, stopping power, achievable resolution etc). In other words, the description of the state of state of the art, including many different particles, with a huge range of involved orders of magnitude in the energy of these particles was quite too simplified. • Fair description in general but the need for a network action is not always convincing. For example 'The radiation detector is often seen as a tool for addressing a scientific problem. The focus is then on the scientific problem and not on the detector. The impression is that many scientists and application developers think that the detector should just be there when it is needed." this seems quite naif cause indeed, especially in medical imaging, the requirements of the detector are dictated by the clinical indications, which may evolve other time.

17. A.1.2 Relevance and Timeliness • The challenge is of high relevance and timeliness. The proposed challenge has the opportunity to highly benefit from the current fast progress in technology evolution and Europe’s strong position in microsystem integration. • The availability of fast, efficient, large area, high resolution radiation detectors are an essential component of the success of large scale facilities where naturally or artificially produced particles and X-rays have to be revealed. Also, efficient X-ray detectors, energy-dispersive or not, are required for clinical medical applications, the largest world marked for such devices. • The optimization of the conception and realization processes requires different expertise from the academic, industry and laboratory worlds. Given the enormous amount of funds required for achieving such know-how, no single institute possess all different expertise. Also, at the European scale, there is a lack of coordination in the field and any effort in this direction, also by sharing individual knowledge, will have significant benefits in the optimization of the public and private investments. The large scale laboratories involved or cited in the proposal are among the leaders of the solid state detectors development. Given the diversity already mentioned at the previous point, an effort in the coordination is worth if done on the common points of the construction and optimization of detectors, like materials, electronics, engineering, bonding, software. Most of the challenges are included in the proposal. The field has not much evolved in the past years; the present on-going or foreseen upgrade of most of the large scale facilities, and the economic crisis that calls for the rapid definition of improved production strategies makes the proposal suitable time-wise. • cfr my earlier comment. the challenge is not clearly address to me.

18. A.1.3 Challenge Feasibility • The feasibility of the challenge is given and can be addressed by a joint network action. Minor concerns include the achievable amount of influence regarding large-scale silicon foundries that are driven by mass-market high-volume consumer applications. • The challenge of improving the radiation detectors performances and to coordinate the efforts at the European scale using the tools provided by COST is feasible. One of the main constraints I see is the role of industry that it is presently not well defined in this network: will the industry be a key partner or not? This is a fundamental question because the scope and orientation of the network including its strategies will vary accordingly. And at the European level, industries are the main stakeholders in the field together with the CERN. • NO the challenge can be tackled by the network. in my eye the network should be established more for exchanging experience across different domains rather than to develop 'detector ready to use when needed ' as they propose. Said this, there is for sure a need for network to exchange experience on this topic.

19. A.2.1 Risk Level • The level of expected return for the tackled challenge is high. Major improvements can be expected by jointly addressing radiation detectors/imagers throughout the complete integration chain. The risk level can be considered moderately to low. • In addition to the standard deliverable of a COST action (WG, website, STSM, dissemination material etc), the main objective is to build a roadmap for the detector development, a research agenda and a technology status report identifying the limiting detector performance and to propose actions to overcome the limitations. No specific constraints can be foreseen for the realization of such deliverables. The expected return can be important for the focusing and coordination of the efforts at the EU level. The network has foreseen the start of the STSMs as a result of "a critical issue identified by the WG". This would mean that for 1-1.5 years there wouldn't be any STSM; this point should be revised because STSMs are a key tool of a COST action. • exchanging experiences form different fields to develop more proformants detectors will certainly improve current state of the art and the potential impact, certainly in medical imaging, will be a fact.

20. A.2.2 Scientific and/or Societal Impact • The foreseen impact can be regarded as excellent. The proposed challenge provides both high impact in fundamental sciences in academia/research/education and serves as well as an interesting approach for the development of new applications, especially in the medical and industrial area, with potentially high societal and economic impact in Europe • The potential impacts are (i) the optimization and rationalization of the resources for the development of more efficient detectors (ii) speed out of this development, (iii) the maintenance/increase of the EU leadership in the field. Societal impact is only indirect through the optimization of resources and the potential construction of improved medical imaging detectors. It is likely that this network will produce a good amount of publications of good level. The number of patents will depend on the effective involvement of industry, yet unclear. This network will be very important for the preparation of replies to R&D EU (H2020) calls resources for the realization of the final objective of producing improved detectors. • more performant detectors are for example improving image acquisition for medical applications. By improving image quality one can for example reduce radiation dose to the population or allow more advanced imaging techniques for diseases detection. this is definitely relevant .

21. A.2.3 Timeframe • The impact can be expected in short-term to mid-term, depending on the application. A strong case can be built to address the challenge. • The impact is expected in the long term. This network will prepare the ground for the optimization of the resources, focusing the objectives, and sharing knowledge. • relatively short, once the detector have been developed..............

22. B.1 In Relation to the Challenge • The proposed network would significantly help to meet the addressed challenges. It provides a unique opportunity to promote radiation detection/imaging efforts and establish a unified research agenda. • Networking is of high importance for meeting the proposed challenges: the definition of priorities, improvement of detectors/electronics engineering etc. The field is effectively dispersed, and calls for coordination through working groups and workshops to prepare a roadmap towards the next generation of radiation and imaging detectors. • yes, thought the proposal is not very rigorously written... for example they do not add any bibliography...

23. B.2 In Relation to Existing Efforts • Given the current landscape of existing networks, e.g. EIROforum, MEDIPIX, which can be classified as scattered and non-holistic the proposed ERDIT network identifies all related major challenges and provides significant added value. • Networking is essential to reach the challenges described by ERDIT. The inclusion of the stakeholders of the EC industry should be considered by the network. • yes I believe so. often parties from different domain on this topic are not sharing expertise

24. C.1 Anonymity (5) • The proposal fully complies with the anonimity requirement.

25. C.2Scope for COST Actions (4) • The proposal aims for the development of new radiation and radiation imaging detectors. A COST action is proposed to coordinate the several existing initiatives on the field. In this regard it is considered that the scope is suitable for a COST Action.

26. C3. Action Structure Suitability (4) • The structure of the proposed Action follows the COST rules and it is properly defined at the management level. However, the milestones and deliverables are not sufficiently explained and linked to the WGs.

27. C4. Feasibilityof Activities (3) • The objectives of the proposed Action should be generally achievable within 4 years. However, milestones are not defined, deliverables lack detail and seem rather disconnected from the Action objectives. Additionally, the potential conflicts with intellectual property are not discussed.

28. D1. Network of Proposers (2) • The number of participating countries is rather limited. Furthermore, the network is dominated by physical sciences, while other important expertise are lacking. In particular, the proposed Action would require the involvement of scientists and industrial stakeholders from European level large-scale facilities like CERN.

29. D2. Plans to Involve Relevant Participants (3) • Considering the ambitious goals and the ill-reported time frame for the milestones and deliverables , it is difficult to assure that the proposal will be viable within the timeframe of a COST Action. The gender balance is low and it should be improved. • There are no detailed plans to involve targeted groups.

30. Expected scientific impact • Large research institutes are currently being built or upgrading their infrastructure. Development of new, high performance, radiation detectors is a critical factor for fundamental science at these institutes • Improved understanding of material properties due to advanced radiation based methods • Improved understanding of radiation interaction with matter

31. Expected socioeconomic impact • Europe has a strong position in developing and manufacturing equipment for industrial and medical radiation detection and imaging. Access to new, high performance, radiation detectors is necessary for European industry to keep their leading position in the field. Some examples: • New industrial applications where spectral information can be used to separate different materials • New diagnostic equipment in medical imaging based on spectral imaging • New radiation detectors will lead to reduced radiation doses and new diagnostic methods in medical imaging. Some examples: • Single photon processing opens up for energy weighting in the images which has been shown to give images of equal quality at 30% reduced dose. • New diagnostic methods using multiple contrast agents in one examination have been proposed

32. Main activities • Regular meetings for exchange of knowledge between different applications using radiation detectors and detector developers • Working Groups to identify the challenges in each application and to develop a Strategic Detector Research Agenda • Contacts with manufacturers, technology developers and other users of the same technology steps to promote joint developments to create critical masses for the development of new technologies • Contacts with European and national funding agencies to raise the awareness of the need for new high-performance radiation detectors. • Coordination of the national activities in the field of radiation detector development.

33. Main results • A Radiation Detector Research Agenda defining common challenges for applications using radiation detectors and the developments needed to overcome these challenges. • An established network of detector scientists coordinating the work on radiation detector development in Europe.

34. List of deliverables • D1 – Type 17. Website. An Action website will be developed immediately at the start of the Action. • D2 – Type 2. Action Workshop. An Action Workshop will be held annually • D3 – Type 22. Conference Attendance for Action Dissemination Purposes. • D4 – Type 1. Action meeting. Action meetings are foreseen to be held annually • D5 – Type 8. Documents to be used as input to Stakeholders. • An application requirements • A technology status report • D8 – Type 5. Short-term Scientific Missions. Such activities will be initiated as a result of a critical issue identified by the Working Groups. • D9 – Type 31. Input for the Formulation of Framework ProgrammeCalls • D10 – Type 18. Production of Dissemination Material for Distribution

35. Lessons learnt • ERDIT is suitable for a COST Action • There is always a substantial difference between evaluators in Step 1 • We need much stronger focus on deliverables and milestones including dates and criteria for assessment • Activities as STSM need to start immediately if the action is granted • It was much more complicated to for scientists to register as proposers than we had expected • Scientists from most COST countries must be invited • Scientists from industry must be invited • Scientists from large research infrastructures must be invited

36. schedule • Updated draft of the proposal circulated within ERDIT late in September • Feedback expected not later then September 15 • Final draft early in October • Invitations to join the proposal early in October • Proposal deadline early in November?