Recently a new Thomson scattering diagnostic system was upgraded in EAST tokamak experiment using a multipulse Nd:YAG (neodymium-yttrium aluminium garnet) laser and a multipoint observation volumes. This diagnostic uses a new optical laser alignment technique that was made to determine accurately the laser position, and a new lens collection system that enables the measurement of wider plasma's object. A composite control system made we can get the results in several seconds. Furthermore, a new data processing method was adopted for much exact results.

A multipulse and multipoint Nd:YAG (neodymium-yttrium aluminum garnet) laser Thomson scattering diagnostic system was developed on EAST to obtain more accurate electron temperature Te and electron density ne profiles. In this paper, the optical system, the VME (versa module eurocard)-based real-time computer system for laser control, data acquisition, analysis and calibration are discussed in detail. Furthermore, a developed data processing method is presented.

In geometric calibration of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), sphere-like objects such as balls are widely imaged, the positioning information of which is obtained to determine the unknown geometric parameters. In this process, the accuracy of the detector location of CB projection of the center of the ball, which we call the center projection, is very important, since geometric calibration is sensitive to errors in the positioning information. Currently in almost all the geometric calibration using balls, the center projection is invariably estimated by the center of the support of the projection or the centroid of the intensity values inside the support approximately. Clackdoyle's work indicates that the center projection is not always at the center of the support or the centroid of the intensity values inside, and has given a quantitative analysis of the maximum errors in evaluating the center projection by the centroid. In this paper, an exact method is proposed to calculate the center projection, utilizing both the detector location of the ellipse center and the two axis lengths of the ellipse. Numerical simulation results have demonstrated the precision and the robustness of the proposed method. Finally there are some comments on this work with non-uniform density balls, as well as the effect by the error occurred in the evaluation for the location of the orthogonal projection of the cone vertex onto the detector.

Metal artifacts seriously degrade the quality of the CT data and bring great difficulties to subsequent image processing and analysis, which nowadays become a great concern in X-ray CT applications. In this paper, we introduce a U-net-based metal artifact reduction method into CT image domain. The proposed network reduces metal artifacts by learning an end-to-end mapping of images from metal-corrupted CT images to their corresponding artifact-free ground truth images. We design and optimize the network through the simulation experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed method can well reduce metal artifacts of CT images, and this method has higher computational efficiency and greatly shortens the processing time. It avoids complex image preprocessing and can accept input images of any size. Therefore, it can be a more automated way to handle large amounts of data, making it ideal for existing CT workflows.

The extension of the neutral sodium (Na) layer into the thermosphere (up to 170 km) has recently been observed at low and high latitudes using a Na lidar. However, the geophysical mechanisms and implications of its formation are currently unknown. In this study, we conduct an advanced two-dimensional numerical simulation of the Na and Na + variations in the E and F regions at low latitudes. The numerical simulations are used to investigate the contributions of the electromagnetic force, neutral wind, diffusion, and gravity. The simulations lead to three major findings. First, Na + in the subtropical region of the geomagnetic equator acts as the major reservoir of the neutral sodium, and its distribution during nighttime is mostly below 200 km due to the combined effect of the vertical component of the E ! × B ! drift and Coulomb-induced drift. Second, we find that the fountain effect has little influence on the behavior of Na in the nighttime. Third, the probable explanation for the frequent generation of the thermospheric sodium layer during spring equinox at Cerro Pachón, Chile is attributed to the large vertical neutral transport generated by large vertical wind perturbations of unknown origin, with a magnitude exceeding 10 m/s that is closely associated with the semidiurnal tide.

Linear scan computed tomography (CT) is a promising imaging configuration with high scanning efficiency while the data set is under-sampled and angularly limited for which high quality image reconstruction is challenging. In this work, an edge guided total variation minimization reconstruction (EGTVM) algorithm is developed in dealing with this problem. The proposed method is modeled on the combination of total variation (TV) regularization and iterative edge detection strategy. In the proposed method, the edge weights of intermediate reconstructions are incorporated into the TV objective function. The optimization is efficiently solved by applying alternating direction method of multipliers. A prudential and conservative edge detection strategy proposed in this paper can obtain the true edges while restricting the errors within an acceptable degree. Based on the comparison on both simulation studies and real CT data set reconstructions, EGTVM provides comparable or even better quality compared to the non-edge guided reconstruction and adaptive steepest descent-projection onto convex sets method. With the utilization of weighted alternating direction TV minimization and edge detection, EGTVM achieves fast and robust convergence and reconstructs high quality image when applied in linear scan CT with under-sampled data set.

A high spatial resolution imaging Thomson scattering diagnostic system was developed in ASIPP (Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences). After about one month trial running on the superconducting HT-7 (Hefei Tokamak-7) tokamak, the system was proved to be capable of measuring plasma electron temperature. The system setup and data calibration are described in this paper and then the instrument function is studied in detail, as well as the measurement capability, an electron temperature of 50 eV to 2 keV and density beyond 1 × 10(19) m(-3). Finally, the data processing method and experimental results are presented.

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