Temperature stabilization of a K110 variable energy cyclotron magnet.

For a large-scale cyclotron using normal conducting magnet coils, 10 h or more are required to obtain a highly stable magnetic field because heat transfer from the coils changes the temperature of the magnets gradually. To suppress the heat transfer and stabilize the magnet temperature in the TIARA K110 cyclotron, water-cooled copper plates were inserted between the main coil and the magnetic yoke. The heat generated by the main coil depends on its circulating current, which depends on the accelerated ion beam. To stabilize the magnet temperature, a technique was developed to control the temperature of the cooling water of the copper plates depending on the main coil current. Consequently, the temperature of the magnet was stabilized successfully to 24 ± 0.3 °C for various ion beams, and the magnetic field was maintained at ΔB/B = 1 × 10-5 after a few hours from initiating cyclotron operation.

Artery and vein diameter ratio measurement based on improvement of arteries and veins segmentation on retinal images.

Retinal arteriolar narrowing is decided based on the artery and vein diameter ratio (AVR). Previous methods segmented blood vessels and classified arteries and veins by color pixels in the centerlines of blood vessels. AVR was definitively determined through measurement of artery and vein diameters. However, this approach was not sufficient for cases with close contact between the artery of interest and an imposing vein. Here, an algorithm for AVR measurement via new classification of arteries and veins is proposed. In this algorithm, additional steps for an accurate segmentation of arteries and veins, which were not identified using the previous method, have been added to better identify major veins in the red channel of a color image. To identify major arteries, a decision tree with three features was used. As a result, all major veins and 90.9% of major arteries were correctly identified, and the absolute mean error in AVRs was 0.12. The proposed method will require further testing with a greater number of images of arteriolar narrowing before clinical application.

Enhancement of beam pulse controllability for a single-pulse formation system of a cyclotron.

The single-pulse formation technique using a beam chopping system consisting of two types of high-voltage beam kickers was improved to enhance the quality and intensity of the single-pulse beam with a pulse interval over 1 µs at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency cyclotron facility. A contamination rate of neighboring beam bunches in the single-pulse beam was reduced to less than 0.1%. Long-term purification of the single pulse beam was guaranteed by the well-controlled magnetic field stabilization system for the cyclotron magnet. Reduction of the multi-turn extraction number for suppressing the neighboring beam bunch contamination was achieved by restriction of a beam phase width and precise optimization of a particle acceleration phase. In addition, the single-pulse beam intensity was increased by a factor of two or more by a combination of two types of beam bunchers using sinusoidal and saw-tooth voltage waveforms. Provision of the high quality intense single-pulse beam contributed to improve the accuracy of experiments for investigation of scintillation light time-profile and for neutron energy measurement by a time-of-flight method.

Influence of injection beam emittance on beam transmission efficiency in a cyclotron.

The JAEA AVF cyclotron accelerates various kinds of high-energy ion beams for research in biotechnology and materials science. Beam intensities of an ion species of the order of 10(-9)-10(-6) ampere are often required for various experiments performed sequentially over a day. To provide ion beams with sufficient intensity and stability, an operator has to retune an ion source in a short time. However, the beam intensity downstream of the cyclotron rarely increases in proportion to the intensity at the ion source. To understand the cause of this beam behavior, transmission efficiencies of a (12)C(5+) beam from an electron cyclotron resonance ion source to the cyclotron were measured for various conditions of the ion source. Moreover, a feasible region for acceleration in the emittance of the injection beam was clarified using a transverse-acceptance measuring system. We confirmed that the beam emittance and profile were changed depending on the condition of the ion source and that matching between the beam emittance and the acceptance of the cyclotron was degraded. However, after fine-tuning to improve the matching, beam intensity downstream of the cyclotron increased.

Improved automated optic cup segmentation based on detection of blood vessel bends in retinal fundus images.

Glaucoma is a leading cause of permanent blindness. Retinal imaging is useful for early detection of glaucoma. In order to evaluate the presence of glaucoma, ophthalmologists may determine the cup and disc areas and diagnose glaucoma using a vertical optic cup-to-disc (C/D) ratio and a rim-to-disc (R/D) ratio. Previously we proposed a method to determine cup edge by analyzing a vertical profile of pixel values, but this method provided a cup edge smaller than that of an ophthalmologist. This paper describes an improved method using the locations of the blood vessel bends. The blood vessels were detected by a concentration feature determined from the density gradient. The blood vessel bends were detected by tracking the blood vessels from the disc edge to the primary cup edge, which was determined by our previous method. Lastly, the vertical C/D ratio and the R/D ratio were calculated. Using forty-four images, including 32 glaucoma images, the AUCs of both the vertical C/D ratio and R/D ratio by this proposed method were 0.966 and 0.936, respectively.

Automated microaneurysm detection method based on Eigenvalue analysis using Hessian matrix in retinal fundus images.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the most frequent cause of blindness. Microaneurysm (MA) is an early symptom of DR. Therefore, the detection of MA is important for the early detection of DR. We have proposed an automated MA detection method based on double-ring filter, but it has given many false positives. In this paper, we propose an MA detection method based on eigenvalue analysis using a Hessian matrix, with an aim to improve MA detection. After image preprocessing, the MA candidate regions were detected by eigenvalue analysis using the Hessian matrix in green-channeled retinal fundus images. Then, 126 features were calculated for each candidate region. By a threshold operation based on feature analysis, false positive candidates were removed. The candidate regions were then classified either as MA or false positive using artificial neural networks (ANN) based on principal component analysis (PCA). The 126 features were reduced to 25 components by PCA, and were then inputted to ANN. When the method was evaluated on visible MAs using 25 retinal images from the retinopathy online challenge (ROC) database, the true positive rate was 73%, with eight false positives per image.

Useful technique for analysis and control of the acceleration beam phase in the azimuthally varying field cyclotron.

We have developed a new technique for analysis and control of the acceleration beam phase in the cyclotron. In this technique, the beam current pattern at a fixed radius r is measured by slightly scanning the acceleration frequency in the cyclotron. The acceleration beam phase is obtained by analyzing symmetry of the current pattern. Simple procedure to control the acceleration beam phase by changing coil currents of a few trim coils was established. The beam phase width is also obtained by analyzing gradient of the decreasing part of the current pattern. We verified reliability of this technique with 260 MeV (20)Ne(7+) beams which were accelerated on different tuning condition of the cyclotron. When the acceleration beam phase was around 0 degrees, top of the energy gain of cosine wave, and the beam phase width was about 6 degrees in full width at half maximum, a clear turn pattern of the beam was observed with a differential beam probe in the extraction region. Beam phase widths of ion beams at acceleration harmonics of h=1 and h=2 were estimated without beam cutting by phase-defining slits. We also calculated the beam phase widths roughly from the beam current ratio between the injected beam and the accelerated beam in the cyclotron without operating the beam buncher. Both beam phase widths were almost the same for h=1, while phase compressions by a factor of about 3 were confirmed for h=2.

Single-turn extraction from a K110 AVF cyclotron by flat-top acceleration.

Single-turn extraction from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency AVF cyclotron with a K number of 110 using a flat-top (FT) acceleration system has been achieved to reduce the energy spread of an ion beam for microbeam formation with energy up to hundreds of MeV and to increase extraction efficiency from the cyclotron. In order to generate a FT waveform voltage using the fifth-harmonic frequency on a dee electrode, a FT resonator was designed using MAFIA code to achieve downsizing and low power consumption. The FT resonator, coupled to the main resonator through a coupling capacitor, covered the full range of the fifth harmonic frequency from 55 to 110 MHz. Various ion beams, accelerated using different acceleration harmonic modes of h=1 and 2, such as 220 MeV (12)C(5+) (h=2), 260 MeV (20)Ne(7+) (h=2), and 45 MeV H(+) (h=1), were developed by FT acceleration. A clear turn separation of the beam bunches was successfully observed at the extraction region of the large-scale AVF cyclotron with number of revolutions greater than 200. As a result, high extraction efficiency (over 95%) from the cyclotron was achieved. Single-turn extraction was confirmed by counting the number of beam bunches out of the cyclotron for an injected beam pulsed by a beam chopping system in the injection line. The energy spread of the 260 MeV (20)Ne(7+) beam was measured using an analyzing magnet, and we verified a reduction in the energy spread from DeltaE/E=0.1% to 0.05% by single-turn extraction after FT acceleration.

Characteristics of focusing high-energy heavy ion microbeam system at the JAEA AVF cyclotron.

Ion optical analysis was made for a new focusing high-energy heavy ion microbeam system connected to the AVF cyclotron (K=110) at the accelerator facility, TIARA of JAEA Takasaki. The focusing performance of the microbeam system was estimated from both the calculation up to third-order term using TRANSPORT code and the measurement of beam resolution with the secondary electron imaging. As a result, a minimum beam size was evaluated at 0.56 and 0.62 microm in FWHM for the X and Y directions, respectively. The high-energy heavy ion microbeam system seemed to have been established as designed by the calculation with the TRANSPORT code, because it was confirmed that the calculation results was fairly reproduced by the measurement result.