Purpose: In biomedical research, imaging modalities help discover pathological mechanisms to develop and evaluate novel diagnostic and theranostic approaches. However, while standards for data storage in the clinical medical imaging field exist, data curation standards for biomedical research are yet to be established. This work aimed at developing a free secure file format for multimodal imaging studies, supporting common in vivo imaging modalities up to five dimensions as a step towards establishing data curation standards for biomedical research. Procedures: Images are compressed using lossless compression algorithm. Cryptographic hashes are computed on the compressed image slices. The hashes and compressions are computed in parallel, speeding up computations depending on the number of available cores. Then, the hashed images with digitally signed timestamps are cryptographically written to file. Fields in the structure, compressed slices, hashes, and timestamps are serialized for writing and reading from files. The C++ implementation is tested on multimodal data from six imaging sites, well-documented, and integrated into a preclinical image analysis software. Results: The format has been tested with several imaging modalities including fluorescence molecular tomography/x-ray computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET)/CT, single-photon emission computed tomography/CT, and PET/magnetic resonance imaging. To assess performance, we measured the compression rate, ratio, and time spent in compression. Additionally, the time and rate of writing and reading on a network drive were measured. Our findings demonstrate that we achieve close to 50 % reduction in storage space for μCT data. The parallelization speeds up the hash computations by a factor of 4. We achieve a compression rate of 137 MB/s for file of size 354 MB. Conclusions: The development of this file format is a step to abstract and curate common processes involved in preclinical and clinical multimodal imaging studies in a standardized way. This work also defines better interface between multimodal imaging modalities and analysis software.

The problem of work safety greatly affects many parts of the world, especially developing countries such as China. The release of the Thirteenth Five-Year Guideline for National Economic and Social Development in March 2016 marked the beginning of China's Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (13th FYP) period (2016–2020). Work safety continues to be a national priority. Since the release, a newly important work safety policy, namely the 13th FYP for Work Safety has been announced on February 3, 2017 in accordance with the Thirteenth Five-Year Guideline for National Economic and Social Development. What is the current status, what are new challenges and future tasks of work safety during China's 13th FYP period? The two key objectives of this paper are: (1) to analyze the current status of work safety in China, and (2) to introduce the new challenges and future tasks during China's 13th FYP period briefly. Firstly, a statistical analysis of accidents and occupational diseases in recent years in China was carried out, and a brief introduction to safety management on the national level in China has been given to analyze the work safety status in the whole of China. Secondly, combining with the demand for economic and social development in China, and according to the suggestions in the 13th FYP for Work Safety and the current status of work safety in China, the new challenges and future tasks of work safety during China's 13th FYP period are also introduced. This study can promote the cooperation and exchange of knowledge on work safety between China and other countries to provide evidence-based services for work safety.

SPECT can be used to image dopamine transporter (DaT) availability in the human striatum, e.g. for diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). As traditional SPECT provides limited resolution and sensitivity, we proposed a full ring focusing multi-pinhole SPECT system (G-SPECT-I (Beekman 2015 Eur. J. Nucl. Med. Mol. Imaging 42 S209)) which demonstrated a 2.5 mm reconstructed resolution in phantom scans. G-SPECT-I achieves data completeness in the scan region of interest by translating the patient bed with an xyz-stage and combining projections from all bed positions into image reconstruction using a scanning focus method (SFM). This paper aims to develop dedicated SFM parameters for performing a DaTscan with high effective sensitivity and appropriate sampling. To this end, the axial scanning length was restricted and transaxial bed trajectories with a reduced number of positions based on a convex hull data-completeness model were tested. Quantitative accuracy was assessed using full G-SPECT-I simulations of an Alderson phantom based on measured system matrices. For each sampling strategy, the specific binding ratio (SBR) and asymmetry index (AI) in the left and right striatum, as well as the Localized SBR (L-SBR) and the Localized AI (L-AI) in eight striatal sub-regions were calculated and compared to those of the reference scan which performs full brain oversampling using 112 bed positions. Results show that structures essential for PD diagnosis were visually and quantitatively barely affected even when using the lowest number of bed translations (i.e. 4). The maximum deviation from the reference was only 1.5%, 1.5%, 5.5% and 7.0% for the SBR, AI, L-SBR and L-AI, respectively, when 4 positions were used. Thus, it is possible to perform an accurate DaTscan with a confined axial scan region and a limited number of focused bed positions. This enables protocols for extremely fast dynamic SPECT scans with less than half-minute time frames, which can be useful for motion correction.