Digitalization of the reporting of key comparisons for radionuclide metrology

Abstract

The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) operates an international reference system (the SIR) to compare primary standards of radioactivity realized by National Metrology Institutes (NMIs). Recently, the way of managing data relating to this system has been redesigned. The new model is fully integrated into the SI digital transformation initiated by the metrology community. The new approach automates the production of reports on the results from key comparison exercises for publication in the Key Comparison DataBase (KCDB), aiming to reduce the time needed to prepare reports without impacting quality. In operation for a year, the new system has produced 12 comparison reports within deadlines at a quality that meets the needs of the stakeholders in radionuclide metrology. The database and the software are controlled using the states-of-the-art Git version control system. In addition, thanks to the machine-readable database it produces, it paves the way for more digital data exchanges meeting the FAIR principles and directly accessible through a new Application Programming Interface (API) that is under development.

Machine-readable data and metadata of international key comparisons in radionuclide metrology

“…A permanent identifier is provided through the DOI of the corresponding Metrologia publication. The comparison data including the KCRV, laboratory names and associated degrees of equivalence are enhanced with rich metadata, as described in [9], including:…”

“…Facilitating the parsing of data and metadata in these machine-readable versions has already enabled meta-analyses of the results of key comparisons such as the examination of the traceability of radionuclides used in nuclear medicine [11] or the analysis of the influence of measurement parameters to the results [12].…”

Traceability for nuclear medicine: the status of primary radioactivity standards

“…The results from all international comparison exercises are recorded in the KCDB and most have also been published in the Metrologia Technical Series such as the recently published comparison reports for 241 Ac [45] and 223 Ra [46]. For this article, the SIR results, A e,i (see equation ( 2)), from comparisons of each radionuclide have been extracted from the SIR digital database [47] and normalized to the KCRV for that radionuclide such that…”

“…For the pure beta radionuclides, such as 90 Y and 89 Sr, even if key comparisons were organized independently from the BIPM centralized services, the results cannot be linked afterwards to the SIR to ensure the permanence of the KCRV. This consideration underlines the crucial need to develop the ESIR to make a better assessment of equivalence for β-therapy standards ( 90 Y, 89 Sr, 47 Sc and 169 Er) and to help improve equivalences of α-therapy radionuclides such as 225 Ac, 149 Tb and 211 At. The ESIR will also be useful to compare standards of Auger-therapy radionuclides 165 Er and 135 La which show strong promise for future cancer treatments [49].…”

Evaluation of long-term robustness of the International System of Reference (SIR) used in radionuclide metrology based on the meta-analysis of its machine-readable database

“…The recent overhaul of the SIR database in a machinereadable format [7,8] is an opportunity to realize a metaanalysis of SIR measurement data gathered since 1976. Through statistical analysis of the data, the objective is to assess whether the properties of the measured samples or the different experimental set-ups can affect the SIR measurements.…”