Search

Purpose: This study demonstrates a proof of concept of a method for simultaneous anatomical imaging and real-time (SMART) passive device tracking for MR-guided interventions. Methods: Phase Correlation template matching was combined with a fast undersampled radial multi-echo acquisition using the white marker phenomenon after the first echo. In this way, the first echo provides anatomical contrast, whereas the other echoes provide white marker contrast to allow accurate device localization using fast simulations and template matching. This approach was tested on tracking of five 0.5 mm steel markers in an agarose phantom and on insertion of an MRI-compatible 20 Gauge titanium needle in ex vivo porcine tissue. The locations of the steel markers were quantitatively compared to the marker locations as found on a CT scan of the same phantom. Results: The average pairwise error between the MRI and CT locations was 0.30 mm for tracking of stationary steel spheres and 0.29 mm during motion. Qualitative evaluation of the tracking of needle insertions showed that tracked positions were stable throughout needle insertion and retraction. Conclusions: The proposed SMART tracking method provided accurate passive tracking of devices at high framerates, inclusion of real-time anatomical scanning, and the capability of automatic slice positioning. Furthermore, the method does not require specialized hardware and could therefore be applied to track any rigid metal device that causes appreciable magnetic field distortions.

Purpose: To assess the feasibility of deep learning-based high resolution synthetic CT generation from MRI scans of the lower arm for orthopedic applications. Methods: A conditional Generative Adversarial Network was trained to synthesize CT images from multi-echo MR images. A training set of MRI and CT scans of 9 ex vivo lower arms was acquired and the CT images were registered to the MRI images. Three-fold cross-validation was applied to generate independent results for the entire dataset. The synthetic CT images were quantitatively evaluated with the mean absolute error metric, and Dice similarity and surface to surface distance on cortical bone segmentations. Results: The mean absolute error was 63.5 HU on the overall tissue volume and 144.2 HU on the cortical bone. The mean Dice similarity of the cortical bone segmentations was 0.86. The average surface to surface distance between bone on real and synthetic CT was 0.48 mm. Qualitatively, the synthetic CT images corresponded well with the real CT scans and partially maintained high resolution structures in the trabecular bone. The bone segmentations on synthetic CT images showed some false positives on tendons, but the general shape of the bone was accurately reconstructed. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that high quality synthetic CT can be generated from MRI scans of the lower arm. The good correspondence of the bone segmentations demonstrates that synthetic CT could be competitive with real CT in applications that depend on such segmentations, such as planning of orthopedic surgery and 3D printing., Comment: This work has been accepted at the SPIE Medical Imaging 2019, Image Processing conference, paper 10949-54

To enable magnetic resonance (MR)-only radiotherapy and facilitate modelling of radiation attenuation in humans, synthetic-CT (sCT) images need to be generated. Considering the application of MR-guided radiotherapy and online adaptive replanning, sCT generation should occur within minutes. This work aims at assessing whether an existing deep learning network can rapidly generate sCT images to be used for accurate MR-based dose calculations in the entire pelvis. A study was conducted on data of 91 patients with prostate, rectal and cervical cancer who underwent external beam radiotherapy acquiring both CT and MRI for patients' simulation. Dixon reconstructed water, fat and in-phase images obtained from a conventional dual gradient-recalled echo sequence were used to generate sCT images. A conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) was trained in a paired fashion on 2D transverse slices of 32 prostate cancer patients. The trained network was tested on the remaining patients to generate sCT images. For 30 patients in the test set, dose recalculations of the clinical plan were performed on sCT images. Dose distributions were evaluated comparing voxel-based dose differences, gamma and dose-volume histogram (DVH) analysis. The sCT generation required 5.6 s and 21 s for a single patient volume on a GPU and CPU, respectively. On average, sCT images resulted in a higher dose to the target of maximum 0.3%. Results suggest that accurate MR-based dose calculation using sCT images generated with a cGAN trained on prostate cancer patients is feasible for the entire pelvis. The sCT generation was sufficiently fast to be integrated into an MR-guided radiotherapy workflow., Comment: Accepted for publication in Physics in Medicine and Biology, in press (2018)

MR-only radiotherapy treatment planning requires accurate MR-to-CT synthesis. Current deep learning methods for MR-to-CT synthesis depend on pairwise aligned MR and CT training images of the same patient. However, misalignment between paired images could lead to errors in synthesized CT images. To overcome this, we propose to train a generative adversarial network (GAN) with unpaired MR and CT images. A GAN consisting of two synthesis convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and two discriminator CNNs was trained with cycle consistency to transform 2D brain MR image slices into 2D brain CT image slices and vice versa. Brain MR and CT images of 24 patients were analyzed. A quantitative evaluation showed that the model was able to synthesize CT images that closely approximate reference CT images, and was able to outperform a GAN model trained with paired MR and CT images., Comment: MICCAI 2017 Workshop on Simulation and Synthesis in Medical Imaging

The no-signaling constraint on bi-partite correlations is reviewed. It is shown that in order to obtain non-trivial Bell-type inequalities that discern no-signaling correlations from more general ones, one must go beyond considering expectation values of products of observables only. A new set of nontrivial no-signaling inequalities is derived which have a remarkably close resemblance to the CHSH inequality, yet are fundamentally different. A set of inequalities by Roy and Singh and Avis et al., which is claimed to be useful for discerning no-signaling correlations, is shown to be trivially satisfied by any correlation whatsoever. Finally, using the set of newly derived no-signaling inequalities a result with potential cryptographic consequences is proven: if different parties use identical devices, then, once they have perfect correlations at spacelike separation between dichotomic observables, they know that because of no-signaling the local marginals cannot but be completely random., Comment: Published in 'Proceedings of the International Conference Advances in Quantum Theory', AIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 1327, 2011. pp. 36-53

Translation of 'Die Logik Nicht Gleichzeitig Entscheidbarer Aussagen' by Ernst Specker, Dialectica, vol. 14, 239 - 246 (1960)., Comment: Made available due to demand for citable version. A different translation by Allen Stairs is also available in C.A. Hooker (ed.), 'The Logico-Algebraic Approach to Quantum Mechanics. Volume I: Historical Evolution'. (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1975), pp. 135-140. v2: small corrections. v3: same as v2, but now with the correct revised source file

This white paper aims to identify an open problem in 'Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality' --namely whether quantum theory and special relativity are formally compatible--, to indicate what the underlying issues are, and put forward ideas about how the problem might be addressed., Comment: Invited white paper for Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality, John Polkinghorne 80th Birthday Conference. St Anne's College, Oxford. 26-29 September 2010

The starting point of the present paper is Bell's notion of local causality and his own sharpening of it so as to provide for mathematical formalisation. Starting with Norsen's (2007, 2009) analysis of this formalisation, it is subjected to a critique that reveals two crucial aspects that have so far not been properly taken into account. These are (i) the correct understanding of the notions of sufficiency, completeness and redundancy involved; and (ii) the fact that the apparatus settings and measurement outcomes have very different theoretical roles in the candidate theories under study. Both aspects are not adequately incorporated in the standard formalisation, and we will therefore do so. The upshot of our analysis is a more detailed, sharp and clean mathematical expression of the condition of local causality. A preliminary analysis of the repercussions of our proposal shows that it is able to locate exactly where and how the notions of locality and causality are involved in formalising Bell's condition of local causality., Comment: 14 pages. To be published in PSE volume "Explanation, Prediction, and Confirmation", edited by Dieks, et al

A fruitful way of studying physical theories is via the question whether the possible physical states and different kinds of correlations in each theory can be shared to different parties. Over the past few years it has become clear that both quantum entanglement and non-locality (i.e., correlations that violate Bell-type inequalities) have limited shareability properties and can sometimes even be monogamous. We give a self-contained review of these results as well as present new results on the shareability of different kinds of correlations, including local, quantum and no-signalling correlations. This includes an alternative simpler proof of the Toner-Verstraete monogamy inequality for quantum correlations, as well as a strengthening thereof. Further, the relationship between sharing non-local quantum correlations and sharing mixed entangled states is investigated, and already for the simplest case of bi-partite correlations and qubits this is shown to be non-trivial. Also, a recently proposed new interpretation of Bell's theorem by Schumacher in terms of shareability of correlations is critically assessed. Finally, the relevance of monogamy of non-local correlations for secure quantum key distribution is pointed out, although, and importantly, it is stressed that not all non-local correlations are monogamous., Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. Invited submission to a special issue of Quantum Information Processing. v2: Published version. Open access

We extend the quantum-mechanical results of Muller & Saunders (2008) establishing the weak discernibility of an arbitrary number of similar fermions in finite-dimensional Hilbert-spaces in two ways: (a) from fermions to bosons for all finite-dimensional Hilbert-spaces; and (b) from finite-dimensional to infinite-dimensional Hilbert-spaces for all elementary particles. In both cases this is performed using operators whose physical significance is beyond doubt.This confutes the currently dominant view that (A) the quantum-mechanical description of similar particles conflicts with Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII); and that (B) the only way to save PII is by adopting some pre-Kantian metaphysical notion such as Scotusian haecceittas or Adamsian primitive thisness. We take sides with Muller & Saunders (2008) against this currently dominant view, which has been expounded and defended by, among others, Schr\"odinger, Margenau, Cortes, Dalla Chiara, Di Francia, Redhead, French, Teller, Butterfield, Mittelstaedt, Giuntini, Castellani, Krause and Huggett., Comment: Final Version. To appear in Philosophy of Science, July 2009

We present a method to derive separability criteria for the different classes of multiparticle entanglement, especially genuine multiparticle entanglement. The resulting criteria are necessary and sufficient for certain families of states. Further, the criteria are superior to all known entanglement criteria for many other families; also they allow the detection of bound entanglement. We next demonstrate that they are easily implementable in experiments and discuss applications to the decoherence of multiparticle entangled states., Comment: five pages, one figure, v4: final version plus a remark on arXiv:0912.1870

Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem stating that quantum mechanics cannot be reproduced by a physical theory based on realism, freedom to choose experimental settings and two locality conditions: setting (SI) and outcome (OI) independence. We provide a novel analysis of what it takes to violate Bell's inequality within the framework in which both realism and freedom of choice are assumed, by showing that it is impossible to model a violation without having information in one laboratory about both the setting and the outcome at the distant one. While it is possible that outcome information can be revealed from shared hidden variables, the assumed experimenter's freedom to choose the settings forces that setting information must be non-locally transferred, even when the SI condition is obeyed. The sufficient amount of transmitted information about the setting to violate the CHSH inequality up to its quantum mechanical maximum is 0.736 bits., Comment: 5 pages, published version

** The primary topic of this dissertation is the study of the relationships between parts and wholes as described by particular physical theories, namely generalized probability theories in a quasi-classical physics framework and non-relativistic quantum theory. ** A large part of this dissertation is devoted to understanding different aspects of four different kinds of correlations: local, partially-local, no-signaling and quantum mechanical correlations. Novel characteristics of these correlations have been used to study how they are related and how they can be discerned via Bell-type inequalities that give non-trivial bounds on the strength of the correlations. ** The study of quantum correlations has also prompted us to study a) the multi-partite qubit state space with respect to its entanglement and separability characteristics, and b) the differing strength of the correlations in separable and entangled qubit states. Results include a novel classification of multipartite (partial) separability and entanglement, strong constraints on the monogamy of entanglement and of non-local correlations, and many new entanglement detection criteria that are directly experimentally accessible. ** Because of the generality of the investigation these results also have strong foundational as well as philosophical repercussions for the different sorts of physical theories as a whole; notably for the viability of hidden variable theories for quantum mechanics, for the possibility of doing experimental metaphysics, for the question of holism in physical theories, and for the classical vs. quantum dichotomy., Comment: Dissertation, Utrecht University, 2008. 286 pages. ISBN: 978-90-3934916-8. A hard copy is obtainable via Igitur of the Utrecht University Library. This version 3 has exactly the same content as the version 2. Only the page layout has been changed to match the hard copy layout of the Dissertation which is on B5 format

We explore the subtle relationships between partial separability and entanglement of subsystems in multiqubit quantum states and give experimentally accessible conditions that distinguish between various classes and levels of partial separability in a hierarchical order. These conditions take the form of bounds on the correlations of locally orthogonal observables. Violations of such inequalities give strong sufficient criteria for various forms of partial inseparability and multiqubit entanglement. The strength of these criteria is illustrated by showing that they are stronger than several other well-known entanglement criteria (the fidelity criterion, violation of Mermin-type separability inequalities, the Laskowski-\.Zukowski criterion and the D\"ur-Cirac criterion), and also by showing their great noise robustness for a variety of multiqubit states, including N-qubit GHZ states and Dicke states. Furthermore, for N greater than or equal to 3 they can detect bound entangled states. For all these states, the required number of measurement settings for implementation of the entanglement criteria is shown to be only N+1. If one chooses the familiar Pauli matrices as single-qubit observables, the inequalities take the form of bounds on the anti-diagonal matrix elements of a state in terms of its diagonal matrix elements., Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures. v4: published version

By introducing a quantitative `degree of commutativity' in terms of the angle between spin-observables we present two tight quantitative trade-off relations in the case of two qubits: First, for entangled states, between the degree of commutativity of local observables and the maximal amount of violation of the Bell inequality: if both local angles increase from zero to \pi/2 (i.e., the degree of local commutativity decreases), the maximum violation of the Bell inequality increases. Secondly, a converse trade-off relation holds for separable states: if both local angles approach \pi/2 the maximal value obtainable for the correlations in the Bell inequality decreases and thus the non-violation increases. As expected, the extremes of these relations are found in the case of anti-commuting local observables where respectively the bounds of 2\sqrt{2} and \sqrt{2} hold for the expectation of the Bell operator. The trade-off relations show that non-commmutativity gives ``a more than classical result" for entangled states, whereas "a less than classical result" is obtained for separable states. The experimental relevance of the trade-off relation for separable states is that it provides an experimental test for two qubit entanglement. Its advantages are twofold: in comparison to violations of Bell inequalities it is a stronger criterion and in comparison to entanglement witnesses it needs to make less strong assumptions about the observables implemented in the experiment., Comment: V2: Most important change: we have greatly extended the discussion of the theoretical and experimental relevance of the results. v3: Published version

De Raedt et al. (Eur. Phys. J. B 53: 139-142, 2006) have claimed to provide a local realist model for correlations of the singlet state in the familiar Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm (EPRB) experiment when time-coincidence is used to decide which detection events should count in the analysis, and furthermore that this suggests that it is possible to construct local realistic models that can reproduce the quantum mechanical expectation values. In this letter we show that these conclusions cannot be upheld since their model exploits the so-called coincidence-time loophole. When this is properly taken into account no startling conclusions can be drawn about local realist modelling of quantum mechanics., Comment: 3 pages

We strengthen the set of Bell-type inequalities presented by Sun & Fei [Phys. Rev. A 74, 032335 (2006)] that give a classification for biseparable correlations and entanglement in tripartite quantum systems. We will furthermore consider the restriction to local orthogonal spin observables and show that this strengthens all previously known such tripartite inequalities. The quadratic inequalities we find indicate a type of monogamy of maximal biseparable three-particle quantum correlations, although the nonmaximal ones can be shared. This is contrasted to recently found monogamy inequalities for bipartite Bell correlations in tripartite systems., Comment: Accepted final version for PRA. 6 pages

Chen (quant-ph/0611126) has recently claimed ``exponential violation of local realism by separable states", in the sense that multi-partite separable quantum states are supposed to give rise to correlations and fluctuations that violate a Bell-type inequality that Chen takes to be satisfied by local realism. However, this can not be true since all predictions (including all correlations and fluctuations) that separable quantum states give rise to have a local realistic description and thus satisfy all Bell-type inequalities, and this holds for all number of parties. Since Chen claims otherwise by presenting a new inequality, claimed to be a Bell-type one, which separable states supposedly can violate, there must be a flaw in the argumentation. I will expose this flaw, not merely for clarification of this issue, but perhaps even more importantly since it re-teaches us an old lesson John Bell taught us over 40 years ago. I will argue that this lesson provides us with a new morale especially relevant to modern research in Bell-type inequalities., Comment: Welcome

We strengthen the bound on the correlations of two spin-1/2 particles (qubits) in separable (non-entangled) states for locally orthogonal spin directions by much tighter bounds than the well-known Bell inequality. This provides a sharper criterion for the experimental distinction between entangled and separable states, and even one which is a necessary and sufficient condition for separability. However, these improved bounds do not apply to local hidden-variable theories, and hence they provide a criterion to test the correlations allowed by local hidden-variable theories against those allowed by separable quantum states. Furthermore, these bounds are stronger than some recent alternative experimentally accessible entanglement criteria. We also address the issue of finding a finite subset of these inequalities that would already form a necessary and sufficient condition for non-entanglement. For mixed state we have not been able to resolve this, but for pure states a set of six inequalities using only three sets of orthogonal observables is shown to be already necessary and sufficient for separability., Comment: v2: Considerably changed, many new and stronger results v3: Published version; To appear in Physics Letters A. Online available from publishers website

It is known that the global state of a composite quantum system can be completely determined by specifying correlations between measurements performed on subsystems only. Despite the fact that the quantum correlations thus suffice to reconstruct the quantum state, we show, using a Bell inequality argument, that they cannot be regarded as objective local properties of the composite system in question. It is well known since the work of J.S. Bell, that one cannot have locally preexistent values for all physical quantities, whether they are deterministic or stochastic. The Bell inequality argument we present here shows this is also impossible for correlations among subsystems of an individual isolated composite system. Neither of them can be used to build up a world consisting of some local realistic structure. As a corrolary to the result we argue that entanglement cannot be considered ontologically robust. The argument has an important advantage over others because it does not need perfect correlations but only statistical correlations. It can therefore easily be tested in currently feasible experiments using four particle entanglement., Comment: Published version. Title changed

A recent paper [M. Seevinck and J. Uffink, Phys. Rev. A 65, 012107 (2002)] presented a bound for the three-qubit Mermin inequality such that the violation of this bound indicates genuine three-qubit entanglement. We show that this bound can be improved for a specific choice of observables. In particular, if spin observables corresponding to orthogonal directions are measured at the qubits (e.g., X and Y spin coordinates) then the bound is the same as the bound for states with a local hidden variable model. As a consequence, it can straightforwardly be shown that in the experiment described by J.-W. Pan et al. [Nature 403, 515 (2000)] genuine three-qubit entanglement was detected., Comment: Two pages, no figures, revtex4; minor changes before publication

Motivated by the question what it is that makes quantum mechanics a holistic theory (if so), I try to define for general physical theories what we mean by `holism'. For this purpose I propose an epistemological criterion to decide whether or not a physical theory is holistic, namely: a physical theory is holistic if and only if it is impossible in principle to infer the global properties, as assigned in the theory, by local resources available to an agent. I propose that these resources include at least all local operations and classical communication. This approach is contrasted with the well-known approaches to holism in terms of supervenience. The criterion for holism proposed here involves a shift in emphasis from ontology to epistemology. I apply this epistemological criterion to classical physics and Bohmian mechanics as represented on a phase and configuration space respectively, and for quantum mechanics (in the orthodox interpretation) using the formalism of general quantum operations as completely positive trace non-increasing maps. Furthermore, I provide an interesting example from which one can conclude that quantum mechanics is holistic in the above mentioned sense, although, perhaps surprisingly, no entanglement is needed., Comment: Published version

We derive N-particle Bell-type inequalities under the assumption of partial separability, i.e. that the N-particle system is composed of subsystems which may be correlated in any way (e.g. entangled) but which are uncorrelated with respect to each other. These inequalities provide, upon violation, experimentally accessible sufficient conditions for full N-particle entanglement, i.e. for N-particle entanglement that cannot be reduced to mixtures of states in which a smaller number of particles are entangled. The inequalities are shown to be maximally violated by the N-particle Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states., Comment: 4 pages, Published by Physical Review Letters. Final version

We point out a loophole problem in some recent experimental claims to produce three-particle entanglement. The problem consists in the question whether mixtures of two-particle entangled states might suffice to explain the experimental data. In an attempt to close this loophole, we review two sufficient conditions that distinguish between N-particle states in which all N particles are entangled to each other and states in which only M particles are entangled (with M