Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

A vile despicible act

The people responsible for this act should be made to die a slow painful death.

From the MSNBC story:

The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 22 Colombian nationals for smuggling heroin into the United States via various methods, including surgically implanting the drug into puppies, officials said Wednesday.

The Colombian organization brought more than 20 kilograms of heroin into the United States, concealing some of it by slitting open purebred puppies, according to John P. Gilbride, the DEA's New York Field Division special agent-in-charge, in a news release.

At least three puppies died from having liquid heroin packets placed inside them and then being stitched back up, DEA spokesman David Ausiello said.

Just reading about it and seeing some of the pictures makes my stomach turn.

Four words that are never good to hear

"We've had a misadministration"

As a diagnostic medical physicist, you don't hear those words very often (unless you're talking to a therapy physicist), nor do you want to hear them very often. Not because something really really bad has happened, but mostly because it involves a lot of paperwork and calculating and almost always happen when you're in the middle of doing other things that need to be done yesterday.

Misadministrations in diagnostic radiology don't happen very often because, well, it's really hard for an event to qualify as one. Most of them tend to happen in Nuclear Medicine. 10 CFR Part 35 Subpart 3045 lists a bunch of criteria that have to be met in order for an event to be considered reportable (as far as the NRC is concerned).

10 CFR 35.3045 says (in part):

A licensee shall report any event, except for an event that results from patient intervention, in which the administration of byproduct material or radiation from byproduct material results in--

• A dose that differs from the prescribed dose or dose that would have resulted from the prescribed dosage by more than 0.05 Sv (5 rem) effective dose equivalent, 0.5 Sv (50 rem) to an organ or tissue, or 0.5 Sv (50 rem) shallow dose equivalent to the skin; and
• The total dose delivered differs from the prescribed dose by 20 percent or more;
• The total dosage delivered differs from the prescribed dosage by 20 percent or more or falls outside the prescribed dosage range; or
• The fractionated dose delivered differs from the prescribed dose, for a single fraction, by 50 percent or more.
• A dose that exceeds 0.05 Sv (5 rem) effective dose equivalent, 0.5 Sv (50 rem) to an organ or tissue, or 0.5 Sv (50 rem) shallow dose equivalent to the skin from any of the following--
• An administration of a wrong radioactive drug containing byproduct material;
• An administration of a radioactive drug containing byproduct material by the wrong route of administration;
• An administration of a dose or dosage to the wrong individual or human research subject;
• An administration of a dose or dosage delivered by the wrong mode of treatment; or
• A leaking sealed source.
• A dose to the skin or an organ or tissue other than the treatment site that exceeds by 0.5 Sv (50 rem) to an organ or tissue and 50 percent or more of the dose expected from the administration defined in the written directive (excluding, for permanent implants, seeds that were implanted in the correct site but migrated outside the treatment site).

The radiation dose requirements (> 0.05 Sv (5 rem) effective dose equivalent, 0.5 Sv (50 rem) to an organ or tissue, or 0.5 Sv (50 rem) shallow dose equivalent to the skin) are almost always never met because diagnostic doses simply never get that high. The only procedure in Nuclear Medicine that comes close would be a therapeutic I-131 administration. There aren't any diagnostic radiology procedures that should come even close to these exposure levels. So unless that radiation dose threshold is met, even if the other criteria were met (wrong drug, wrong site, wrong patient, wrong dosage) it still wouldn't be considered a reportable event. It might still be considered a misadministration as far as internal hospital/departmental policies are concerned, but nothing that the NRC needs to be informed about. Still, that doesn't mean records don't need to be kept on the incident. And there are lots of things that need to be done: dose estimate calculations, physician notification, patient counselling, the paper trail, and plans to prevent recurrence. Usually it means getting lots of people involved. Fortunately for the patient though there usually aren't any significant side effects resulting from any misadministrations that happen in radiology. Radiation therapy misadministrations on the other hand, are a totally different matter.

Digital camera artifact

A strange looking artifact started showing up on the wife's digital camera (a Sony DSC-W5) yesterday. In regular non-zoom mode, it just shows up as a small dark fuzzy patch in the lower left corner of the image. At full optical zoom it becomes a slightly more defined small rectangular patch:

It's not anything on the surface of the lens, and it doesn't move when the optical zoom is adjusted so I'm thinking it must be something on the CCD. With a flashlight and some image enhancement using GIMP I managed to get these images:

Not entirely sure what to make of it. The striations possibly suggest something spring-like. A few hours later, it migrated a little bit higher to the left middle of the screen (perhaps in response to some soft thumping I gave it). Looks like I'll have to send it in to have it looked at.

Searching for a new dog food

Since the end of December 2005, we've been hunting around for a new dog food for Nala. Most people would think "dog food, simple. Just pick up a bag of dog chow at the grocery store". Sure, if you want to feed your dog junk food and crap. Most people don't think to look at the ingredients of the dog food they buy though, and is something most people should give more consideration to.

Choosing a Dog Food: Guidelines
Understanding Commercial Dog Foods

We'd been feeding her Diamond Large breed Lamb & Rice up to then, and decided to switch to something else until the recalled food problem blew over.

Nala's breeders had switched to Premium Edge Skin & Coat (a salmon/sweet potato based food) and recommended it to us to try, so we started her on that at the beginning of January. She was doing pretty well on it up until we got to the end of the bag, when her poop started to get really soft and runny (all dog owners seem to eventually turn into hard core poop monitors). Vet said everything looked ok; no worms or anything like that, and she was otherwise normal. So we switched to Wellness Fish & Potato to see if maybe it was the salmon. No change in her poop, so I think maybe Nala's just not a fish food kind of dog. It's a shame, because both foods have a really good looking list of ingredients, and her coat was looking really fantastic on the fish based foods too. Adding fibre to her food helped firm up the poop, so I suppose we could have gone that route and stayed on the Premium Edge or Wellness.

We decided to switch Nala back to lamb & rice and try a new food we saw at PetSmart, Blue Adult Lamb & Rice from a company called Blue Buffalo. I was really impressed with the list of ingredients, with lamb and lamb meal as the first two (like with people food, dog food ingredients are listed in order of their amount in the food). Whole grains fill out the last three ingredients in the top 5, which should provide plenty of fibre for nice firm poops. Hopefully Nala will do well on this food (I think she will). It's a little pricier than the Diamond L&R, but considering a month's supply costs about as much as we might spend on dinner at a restaurant, it's not bad. At 442 calories/cup, we might have to add more high fibre veggies to her food just to fill her up stomach though!

Another Mikey meme thingy

Another one of those 'getting to know you' type meme things from Mike

What time did you get up this morning?
Around 0615

What did you do yesterday?
Wrote up a couple of reports for equipment surveys, a bit of running around doing miscellaneous crap. Then it was home to get the dog and go to the dog park, followed by a trip to PetSmart for some dog food.

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

What is your favourite TV show?
Battlestar Galactica

What do you usually have for breakfast?
Ceral

Favourite cuisine?
Italian

What is your middle name?
Don't have one

What food do you dislike?
Any organ meat

What is your favourite CD at the moment?
Don't really do much CD listening

What kind of car do you drive?
2000 Toyota Camry

Favourite sandwich?
French dip

What characteristics do you despise?
Arrogance, ignorance and stupidity

Favourite item of clothing?
Jeans

If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?
Barbados.

What colour is your bathroom?
Yellow

Favourite brand of clothing?
Levis

Where would you retire to?
Barbados. It's a nice place to lay out on the beach and snack on fried flying fish.

What was your most recent memorable birthday?
My birthdays tend to be fairly unremarkable. The most memorable one (if i could remember it) probably would have involved doing out drinking with the guys. I suppose if I don't remember it it's not all that memorable then (to me anyway)

Favourite sport to watch?
I'm not really a big sports watcher

Furthest place you are sending this?
Depends on who happens to browse here.

Who do you least expect to send this back to you?
Probably Mark because he's dead. Or off looking for his wallet.

Person you expect to send it back first?
Hmm, dunno.

Favourite saying?
Oh crap.

When is your birthday?
In January

Are you a morning person or a night person?
Morning person

What is your shoe size?
8.5

Pets:
Nala, female Lab Retriever

Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us?
I'm an uncle again!

What did you want to be when you were little?
A fireman, then an astronaut

How are you today?
Oh just peachy. Overworked, but peachy.

What is your Favourite candy?
M&Ms

What is your Favourite flower?
I've always thought most cacti were kind of cool

What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
Any Fridays.

Preventing image hotlinking

Just a post to note an interesting method of keeping image hotlinkers out

Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention

Happy Valentine's day!

Our new PET/CT is up!

The last week or so has been pretty hectic trying to get everything ready for our new GE Discovery ST PET/CT scanner. Yesterday after a bit of unexpected downtime in the morning, we did the first two clinical patients which went smashingly well. Four more patients on the schedule for today. Lots of work for me to do still on the unit for acceptance testing. Probably should have gotten it done last week, but there were plenty of other things going on with the scanner to keep me busy. Looking foward to finally getting the NEMA PET tests started tomorrow and Friday. In the meantime, I get to go acceptance test my first DR unit tomorrow morning. Should be an interesting experience.

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in?

You scored as Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix). You can change the world around you. You have a strong will and a high technical aptitude. Is it possible you are the one? Now if only Agent Smith would quit beating up your friends.

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 75% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 75% Serenity (Firefly) 69% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 69% Moya (Farscape) 69% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 69% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 63% SG-1 (Stargate) 63% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 56% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 50% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 50%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Some days...

Spotted on the sign for a local vet clinic

Some days you're the dog.
Some days you're the hydrant.

Patent dreams

Had a very strange dream about patented things. I'm not entirely sure if it was actually a dream, or something I'm remembering from reading somewhere though.

So there I am having one of my 'fly on the wall' type dreams watching some guy talk to someone about computer related patents. He's talking about one in particular, a patent for some kind of network router that he tried to build from the plans in the patent application. For some reason he couldn't get it to work at all, so he was wondering what other kinds of ridiculous things had been granted patents, but didn't work at all.

Then I woke up.

Very strange.

First DR unit is in!

Did the acceptance testing of our first digital radiography unit a couple of days ago, a GE Revolution XR/d.

As imaging technology changes, I usually have to adapt my testing methods to fit. Some technologies render certain tests obsolete or irrelevant while other tests need to be modified, or the analysis changed. In the past, I've had to modify my test and analysis procedures for CR units and more recently multi-detector CT scanners.

This new DR unit was no exception. Being a digital unit, a few things went a lttle faster and easier. Images pop up within 15 seconds of the exposure, so a lot of time gets cut out waiting for the images to appear. The table detector is electronically coupled to the location of the tube and slides along as you move the tube along the table, so no need to fuss with centering the tube over the detector. The folks at GE were even kind enough to incorporate a patient entrance dose display and cumulative exposure counter on the workstation. For some reason though, they've apparently decided to forego any kind of exposure index indicator - some kind of indicator to the technologist that the x-ray exposure they just made falls within an acceptable range for image quality. At least there wasn't one that I could find or that the service engineer knew about.

An exposure index is a very useful tool for providing feedback to the technologist. With conventional film/screen, the tech can easily see whether the exposure was too much or too little by how dark the developed film comes out. With digital imaging, there's no relationship between the appearance of the image and exposure adequacy except in the appearance of noise. Almost all CR manufacturers have some form of exposure index that's displayed to the tech. I'm puzzled as to why this GE DR unit doesn't have anything. Maybe I'll just have to dig deeper to find it.

The first problem this caused was just how to test the kV and thickness tracking for the phototimer. The phototimer is responsible for making sure the image receptor (film, CR cassette, DR receptor) gets enough radiation to produce an adequate image. For film, you measure the optical density (OD). With CR, I use whatever exposure index is provided by the CR vendor as an analog for OD. With this GE DR unit, there wasn't anything immediately obvious to use. So after a bit of mucking around with the software to see what I could find, I eventually ended up using a central region of interest to get the mean pixel value from the raw unprocessed image and tracking that value. Everything seemed to come out ok, although I have no feel for what an acceptable range would be. Something I'll have to work out I suppose. In the meantime, this lack of any kind of exposure index seems like a potentially serious issue as far as providing feedback to the technologist.

The other new thing that needs to be done is the detector evaluation. These detectors need to be properly calibrated, and I'll probably have to include procedures for verifying the calibration. Somewhere in the world of AAPM subcomittees and task groups, there was one putting out a report on testing CR and DR units, which is something I've been waiting a while for and is just what I need for this task. I didn't see it on the list of active task groups, and last I heard the final report was coming RSN, so hopefully I'll see something soon.

We've got a couple more DR rooms being installed in the next few months (hopefully), so I'll have a chance to try out some new procedures in a little while.

Blog archive ordering

Ok, so I've been blogging for a few years now, and reading a bunch of them in the meantime. This is something I've always wondered about: Why do people always sort their blog archives in reverse chronological order (newest to oldest)? For the main blog page it makes perfect sense to have the most recent post at the top. You don't want to make readers have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find the most recent entry. But for archives, IMO it makes very little sense. Think about it...sorting in reverse chronological order means the reader has to read through your blogging history from the bottom of the browser and scroll upwards. If an entry is longer than a screen length, then the reader has to scroll down to read the full entry, then scroll back up to find the next one.

Makes for lots of senseless scrolling. A much more logical way of reading blog archives would be sorted in chronological order (oldest to newest).

So why do people leave their blog archives like this? Just something they've never thought about? Because that's the way it's always been done? Something they can't change? I can't imagine any blogging software worth the bits it's made from not giving the user at least that capability.

Bloggers, think about what you're doing to your fellow readers!

What was that noise?

It was probably the cry of anguish from thousands of Canadians after the mens hockey team got shut out by the Russians in the quarter finals on Wednesday.

Bummer.

However, I am pleasantly surprised at how much curling action I'm seeing on TV this year. The Canadian women's team took bronze yesterday (hooray!) and the men go for gold today. I'm kind of bummed I won't be able to watch the Canadian men's team going for gold though (it's on at 11:30 this morning and I'll be stuck at work). Guess I'll have to settle for trying to catch highlights of the game.

Update: The men's team took the gold!. Woohoo!

Great archive, not so great search capabilities

Ok, so I finally got around to redoing my Medical Physics virtual CD jukebox properly so I'm not limited by the number of loopback devices. Works fabulously.

Now I have to figure out how to make it more convenient to search besides opening up the index page for each month's issue. Since they're all online now, there should be some way of crawling through the directory structure and indexing each of the PDF files. Googling returns a few possible solutions, but mostly for PDF files contained inside a webspace somewhere, which these are not. I suppose I could make them web accessible and index them using something like ht://dig or even have GoogleBot crawl it, but then I'd probably be violating some copyright rules. PDFSearch looks like it might have some potential, but looks a little cumbersome.

Guess I'll just keep on looking.

Firefox not so <strong>?

I haven't had the chance to test things extensively yet, but the last few Firefox nightly builds (currently using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060227 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2006022704) just haven't been behaving properly.

For one, <strong> and <b> tags don't seem to be rendering at all. Let's test.

This is inside <strong> tags. This isn't.
This is inside <b> tags. This isn't.

This is a level 3 header

A quick look in IE shows things being rendered properly, but except for the H3 line, none of the strong or bold text gets rendered in this build of Firefox.

Here's a screen shot of what it looks like in IE:

But in Firefox, this is what it looks like:

Also, in text areas the cursor seems to advance a little further than it should as text is entered so that after a little bit of typing, the cursor winds up being a few character widths ahead of where characters are actually being typed.

As I said, I haven't done any extensive testing on this yet. Haven't gotten around to testing on other machines or other browsers to see if it's just this installation or this particular nightly build. A quick search of Mozilla's Bugzilla revealed this bug that was filed last July.

Perhaps I should head off and go file a couple of bug reports. Feel free to chime in and let me know what you see.

Update: Of course, now that I've gone and commented on that bug and attached some screenshots, I download and install the latest nightly (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060228 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2006022804) and discover it seems to have fixed the bold and strong rendering issues. I suppose checking the latest nightly should have been the first thing I did.

Going for 7

I've discovered that it really is possible to rack up 7 blood donations in one year if you time it right. I'm about to head off for #2 so far this year. As long as I don't manage to skip more than a couple of weeks, I'll be making 7 donations this year. Here's my schedule:

1. Jan 3
2. Feb 28
3. Apr 25
4. Jun 20
5. Aug 15
6. Oct 10
7. Dec 5

Cool.

Ok, your turn.

A good 404

Got a laugh out of this one. Marvin meets httpd.

http://www.bac.ro/txts/ftp.txt

Found via Blogus Maximus