Course development

There have been major changes to this course compared to the last round, mandated by the fact that this course was intended to be co-taught with CM2020 (although as it turned out, CM2020 was not taken by anyone this round). The course has now been moved to period 1 and is now taught in the flipped-classroom format outlined above instead of as a regular lecture series, which was the case before. The number of homework assignments was reduced from six to two, and the possibility to hold a presentation for bonus points was removed. These course moments were replaced by workshops, which could give bonus points on the exam. Furthermore, the lab part of the course was changed from one extensive lab and a study visit to three somewhat less extensive labs. The course content was almost unchanged, however, and the examination format was the same as before.

Since last year's course evaluation was predominantly positive, only minor adjustments were made compared to last year. However, there were some changes to the course content, mandated by the planned co-teaching of this course with a similar course in the CBH school, CM2020, which is planned for next year’s course round. Since CM2020 contains more material about detectors than this course has done previously, some material about detectors were added. To make room for this additional material, there were some reductions in the material about image quality metrics. Specifically, quantitative accuracy was omitted, and noise power spectrum was covered somewhat less in depth than before. The decision to record this year’s lectures as videos was also motivated by the planned future co-teaching with CM2020 and is in line with last year’s course evaluation. Since a large part of the next course round will employ the flipped-classroom model of CM2020, these video lectures will be useful for the students of this future round. Last year’s course analysis identified that it was difficult for students to find other students to work together with. For this purpose, the lecturer pointed out at the beginning of the course that students who wanted to form study groups were welcome to contact the lecturer so that he could put them in touch with each other. One group of two students was formed in this way. Another minor change, mandated by a need identified in last year’s evaluation, was that the lab instructions for the x-ray ct lab was revised for clarity and what was previously multiple documents was merged into one.

Compared to last year's course, the main difference was that the course this year was given as a hybrid course rather than only on Zoom, due to the different Corona situation compared to last year. Specifically, the course was given in person, but the lectures were also streamed on Zoom. The lab was held in-person. Most students chose to attend in person. Apart from that, only minor adjustments were made since last year's course evaluation was predominantly positive. The homework was appreciated by the students last year although there was some criticism that it did not provide sufficient knowledge for the exam and that there was sometimes information missing from the lecture notes that was needed for the homework. Based on this feedback, the homework sets were revised somewhat compared to last year, to fix minor errors and omissions and to diversify the range of topics covered. Likewise, the lab instructions were revised for clarity, as suggested by last year's course analysis. Another piece of student feedback from last year was that the office hours were scheduled too far ahead of the homework deadline, and for this reason the office hours were moved to Thursday which is also the last day to hand in the assignments. Very minor adjustments were done to list of reading assignments to harmonize with CM2020 to some degree (since this course and SH2314 are expected to be taught together starting academic year 2023/2024). However, more work remains to be done if these two courses are to be taught together.

Very similar to last year with some minor changes. The lab was organized as a zoom-based event. An online "virtual study visit" (based on online videos) was also organized to replace the study visits from previous years. The hand-in sets were made non-mandatory and part of them were modified to cover the course content more completely.