A near infra-red video system as a protective diagnostic for electron cyclotron resonance heating operation in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator.

The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is a large nuclear fusion device based at Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik in Greifswald in Germany. The main plasma heating system for steady state operation in W7-X is electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH). During operation, part of plama facing components will be directly heated by the non-absorbed power of 1 MW rf beams of ECRH. In order to avoid damages of such components made of graphite tiles during the first operational phase, a near infra-red video system has been developed as a protective diagnostic for safe and secure ECRH operation. Both the mechanical design housing the camera and the optical system are very flexible and respect the requirements of steady state operation. The full system including data acquisition and control system has been successfully tested in the vacuum vessel, including on-line visualization and data storage of the four cameras equipping the ECRH equatorial launchers of W7-X.

Modeling of the ITER-like wide-angle infrared thermography view of JET.

Infrared (IR) thermography systems are mandatory to ensure safe plasma operation in fusion devices. However, IR measurements are made much more complicated in metallic environment because of the spurious contributions of the reflected fluxes. This paper presents a full predictive photonic simulation able to assess accurately the surface temperature measurement with classical IR thermography from a given plasma scenario and by taking into account the optical properties of PFCs materials. This simulation has been carried out the ITER-like wide angle infrared camera view of JET in comparing with experimental data. The consequences and the effects of the low emissivity and the bidirectional reflectivity distribution function used in the model for the metallic PFCs on the contribution of the reflected flux in the analysis are discussed.

Thermo-mechanical analysis of ITER first mirrors and its use for the ITER equatorial visible∕infrared wide angle viewing system optical design.

ITER first mirrors (FMs), as the first components of most ITER optical diagnostics, will be exposed to high plasma radiation flux and neutron load. To reduce the FMs heating and optical surface deformation induced during ITER operation, the use of relevant materials and cooling system are foreseen. The calculations led on different materials and FMs designs and geometries (100 mm and 200 mm) show that the use of CuCrZr and TZM, and a complex integrated cooling system can limit efficiently the FMs heating and reduce their optical surface deformation under plasma radiation flux and neutron load. These investigations were used to evaluate, for the ITER equatorial port visible∕infrared wide angle viewing system, the impact of the FMs properties change during operation on the instrument main optical performances. The results obtained are presented and discussed.

Engineering and manufacturing of ITER first mirror mock-ups.

Most of the ITER optical diagnostics aiming at viewing and monitoring plasma facing components will use in-vessel metallic mirrors. These mirrors will be exposed to a severe plasma environment and lead to an important tradeoff on their design and manufacturing. As a consequence, investigations are carried out on diagnostic mirrors toward the development of optimal and reliable solutions. The goals are to assess the manufacturing feasibility of the mirror coatings, evaluate the manufacturing capability and associated performances for the mirrors cooling and polishing, and finally determine the costs and delivery time of the first prototypes with a diameter of 200 and 500 mm. Three kinds of ITER candidate mock-ups are being designed and manufactured: rhodium films on stainless steel substrate, molybdenum on TZM substrate, and silver films on stainless steel substrate. The status of the project is presented in this paper.

New field programmable gate array-based image-oriented acquisition and real-time processing applied to plasma facing component thermal monitoring.

During operation of present fusion devices, the plasma facing components (PFCs) are exposed to high heat fluxes. Understanding and preventing overheating of these components during long pulse discharges is a crucial safety issue for future devices like ITER. Infrared digital cameras interfaced with complex optical systems have become a routine diagnostic to measure surface temperatures in many magnetic fusion devices. Due to the complexity of the observed scenes and the large amount of data produced, the use of high computational performance hardware for real-time image processing is then mandatory to avoid PFC damages. At Tore Supra, we have recently made a major upgrade of our real-time infrared image acquisition and processing board by the use of a new field programmable gate array (FPGA) optimized for image processing. This paper describes the new possibilities offered by this board in terms of image calibration and image interpretation (abnormal thermal events detection) compared to the previous system.

Wall reflection issues for optical diagnostics in fusion devices.

The problem of light reflection has been raised as a high priority issue for optical diagnostics in next step fusion devices where metallic wall environment will generate significant perturbations in the diagnostics measurements. Tore Supra is a large size tokamak equipped with water-cooled stainless-steel panels used to sustain the plasma long shot radiations. These panels are highly reflective and affect significantly optical systems. In particular, we show that the infrared imaging diagnostic, which surveys the plasma facing component surface temperature for safety purposes, can give incorrect information due to reflected light coming from the bottom limiter. In the visible range, motional Stark effect and Zeff measurements experience important drifts during the plasma heating phases due to parasitic light coming from the limiter, but also from the plasma itself when the viewing lines are facing the reflecting walls. In the next step fusion devices such as ITER, the possibility to use optical measurements needs to be accessed by a modeling of the diagnostic light in its machine environment and the development of new techniques of online correction.

Development of a realistic photonic modeling for the evaluation of infrared reflections in the metallic environment of ITER.

In nuclear fusion experiments, the plasma facing components are exposed to high heat fluxes and infrared (IR) imaging diagnostics are routinely used for surveying their surface temperature for preventing damages. However the future use of metallic components in the ITER tokamak adds complications in temperature estimation. Indeed, low and variable emissivity of the observed surface and the multiple reflections of the light coming from hot regions will have to be understood and then taken into account. In this paper, a realistic photonic modeling based on Monte Carlo ray-tracing codes is used to predict the global response of the complete IR survey system. This also includes the complex vessel geometry and the thermal and optical surface properties using the bidirectional reflectivity distribution function that models the photon-material interactions. The first results of this simulation applied to a reference torus are presented and are used as a benchmark to investigate the validity of the global model. Finally the most critical key model parameters in the reflected signals are identified and their contribution is discussed.

Progress of the ITER equatorial vis/IR wide angle viewing system optical design.

The equatorial vis/IR wide angle viewing system is present in four ITER diagnostic equatorial ports. This instrument will cover a large field of view with high spatial and temporal resolutions, to provide real time temperature measurements of plasma facing components, spectral data in the visible range, information on runaway electrons, and pellet tracking. This diagnostic needs to be reliable, precise, and long lasting. Its design is driven by both the tokamak severe environment and the high performances required for machine protection. The preliminary design phase is ongoing. Paramount issues are being tackled, relative to wide spectral band optical design, material choice, and optomechanical difficulties due to the limited space available for this instrument in the ports, since many other diagnostics and services are also present. Recent progress of the diagnostic optical design and status of associated R&D are presented.

Parametric dependence of turbulent particle transport in tore supra plasmas.

Steady state full noninductive current tore supra plasmas offer a unique opportunity to study the local parametric dependence of particle pinch velocity, in order to discriminate among different theories. Magnetic field shear is found to generate an inward pinch which is dominant in the gradient region (normalized radius 0.3

Particle pinch with fully noninductive lower hybrid current drive in Tore Supra.

Recently, plasmas exceeding 4 min have been obtained with lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) in Tore Supra. These LHCD plasmas extend for over 80 times the resistive current diffusion time with zero loop voltage. Under such unique conditions the neoclassical particle pinch driven by the toroidal electric field vanishes. Nevertheless, the density profile remains peaked for more than 4 min. For the first time, the existence of an inward particle pinch in steady-state plasma without toroidal electric field, much larger than the value predicted by the collisional neoclassical theory, is experimentally demonstrated.

A review of database management systems suitable for neuroimaging.

This study comprises a technical assessment of Database Management Systems (DBMS), which may be of use in the analysis of data obtained from human brain mapping procedures. Due to the large expansion of the neuroimaging field, the use of specialized database software to store and process neuroimages and their attached components is inevitable. The advent of multiple software products, a wealth of technical terms and a wide variety of other applications make the choice of a suitable program sometimes difficult. Through the inclusion of some basic and pertinent criteria (e.g., performance, ease of opening, standardization and portability), we present a descriptive comparison of 12 DBMSs currently available in the commercial and public domain. We have compared and tested three main architecture models which are currently available and assessed their potential applications for imaging purposes: relational, object-oriented, and hybrid. The findings of our study demonstrated that the Illustra software was the best suited for a neuroimaging environment because of its intrinsic ability to handle complex and large objects, such as 3D volumes or geometric structures.

B-SPID: an object-relational database architecture to store, retrieve, and manipulate neuroimaging data.

We propose a hardware and software architecture to respond to crucial problems in the neuroimaging field: storage, retrieval, and processing of large datasets. The B-SPID project, here discussed, concerns the processing of neuroimages and attached components stored in an object-relational multimedia database management system (DBMS). Advanced bioinformation concepts are exploited in this project such as large scale data storage, high level graphical user interfaces and 3D graphical processing and display of data. Our database implementation is based on standard programming components, runs on several UNIX platforms and is written to be evolutive. Queries on this database are designed to obtain and display from neuroimaging data several types of results (pictures, text, or 3D graphical shapes) on heterogeneous systems.

VoxeLine: a software program for 3D real-time visualization of biomedical images.

The architecture and implementation of VoxeLine, a new interactive environment for display and analysis of 2D and 3D images in real-time, is discussed. This modular software project comprises two main parts: a user part (without programming expertise) and a programming part which permits its adaptation to specific problems. VoxeLine has the ability to deal with almost all sorts of data types encountered in the biomedical field (e.g. images, vectors). Another important feature is its ability to show datasets in all directions without duplicating data into the main memory. This feature allows VoxeLine to be used on machines with limited memory capacities and power. Real-time 3D manipulations (10 Hz for a 256 x 256 x 124 MRI dataset) are possible on a classic monoprocessor architecture such as a personal computer.

Fully automatic identification of AC and PC landmarks on brain MRI using scene analysis.

We describe a method for identification of brain structures from MRI data sets. The bulk of the paper concerns an automatic system for finding the anterior and posterior commissures [(AC) and (PC)] in the midsagittal plane. These landmarks are key for the definition of the Talairach space, commonly used in stereotactic neurosurgery, in the definition of common coordinate systems for the pooling of functional positron emission tomography (PET) images and for neuroanatomy studies. The process works according to a step-by-step procedure: it first analyzes the skull limits. A grey-level histogram is then calculated and allows an automated selection of thresholds. Then, the interhemispheric plane is detected. Following an advanced scene analysis in the midsagittal plane for anatomical structures, the AC and the PC are identified. Experimentally, with a set of 200 patients, the process never failed. Its performances and limits are comparable to that of neuroanatomy experts. Those results are due to a high degree of robustness at each step of the program.

Agraphia in Alzheimer's disease: an independent lexical impairment.

This study was conducted to delineate the pattern of the writing impairments in 12 patients with Alzheimer type dementia. The patients performed writing tasks involving regular and irregular words and nonwords given by dictation as well as a decision test composed of printed words and pictures requiring phonologic, lexical, and semantic processing. Writing from dictation demonstrated a predominant, but nonisolated, lexical deficit. In order to better evaluate this lexical disorder, the correlation between the dictation writing scores and the decision task scores was analyzed. No significant correlation was found among scores for irregular words, phonologically plausible errors, and scores of the lexical or semantic decision tasks, but there was a significant correlation among scores for the nonwords, nonphonological spelling errors, and scores of the phonologic decision task using printed words. These results would suggest that the "lexical" deficit in agraphia, i.e., difficulty in retrieval or loss of the spelling representations of words, is independent of the lexical or semantic capacities involved in other modalities.

A voxel-based method for the statistical analysis of gray and white matter density applied to schizophrenia.

We describe a novel technique for characterizing regional cerebral gray and white matter differences in structural magnetic resonance images by the application of methods derived from functional imaging. The technique involves automatic scalp-editing of images followed by segmentation, smoothing, and spatial normalization to a symmetrical template brain in stereotactic Talairach space. The basic idea is (i) to convert structural magnetic resonance image data into spatially normalized images of gray (or white) matter density, effected by segmenting the images and smoothing, and then (ii) to use Statistical Parametric Mapping to make inferences about the relationship between gray (or white) matter density and symptoms (or other pathophysiological measures) in a regionally specific fashion. Because the whole brain sum of gray (or white) matter indices is treated as a confound, the analysis reduces to a characterization of relative gray (or white) matter density on a voxel by voxel basis. We suggest that this is a powerful approach to voxel-based statistical anatomy. Using the technique, we constructed maps of the regional cerebral gray and white matter density correlates of syndrome scores (distinct psychotic symptoms) in a group of 15 schizophrenic patients. There was a negative correlation between the score for the reality distortion syndrome and regional gray matter density in the left superior temporal lobe (P = 0.01) and regional white matter density in the corpus callosum (P < 0.001). These abnormalities may be associated with functional changes predisposing to auditory hallucinations and delusions. This method permits the detection of structural differences within the entire brain (as opposed to selected regions of interest) and may be of value in the investigation of structural gray and white matter abnormalities in a variety of brain diseases.

Clues about the functional neuroanatomy of verbal working memory: a study of resting brain glucose metabolism in Parkinson's disease.

In addition to motor impairment, non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit a variable degree of cognitive impairment which could indicate dysfunction in the central executive of working memory. In this study, we have employed positron emission tomography measurements of resting brain glucose metabolism (CMRglc) to investigate the neural substrates underlying this dysfunction, taking PD as a model disease to assess, within the framework of Alexander's striato-pallido-thalamo-cortical cognitive circuits the functional neuroanatomy of the central executive. We studied central executive performance in 17 non-demented, highly selected PD patients, by means of the Brown-Peterson paradigm (BPP), and correlated the BPP performance according to various response delays (from 0 to 18 s) with local cerebral metabolic rates of glucose. We document for the first time that the BPP performance in PD is heterogeneous not only across delays (with PD patients selectively impaired for the 0 and 3 s delays, compatible with impaired attention and central executive, respectively), but also from subject to subject; a multiple correspondence analysis was able to distinguish two patient subgroups according to short delay BPP performance. The correlational analysis with PET data evidenced a limited number of significant correlations, most of which were consistent with our working hypothesis. Notably, a positive correlation between lateral frontal relative metabolism and BPP performance for short delays, and a negative one between these scores and mediodorsal (MD) thalamic nucleus metabolism, would fit the way in which caudate dopamine denervation would alter in opposite directions frontal cortex and MD nucleus synaptic activity and in turn affect central executive function. The results from this study lend further support to the role of altered thalamo-prefrontal interplay as the basis for central executive dysfunction in PD.

In vivo mapping of brain benzodiazepine receptor changes by positron emission tomography after focal ischemia in the anesthetized baboon.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Recent reports have shown an increase in specific binding (in vitro) of [3H]PK 11195 to peripheral-type benzodiazepine receptors in both experimental animals and humans, reflecting a glial/macrophagic reaction within and around focal ischemic insults. We have evaluated by positron emission tomography the time course of changes in brain uptake in vivo of 11C-labeled PK 11195 and flumazenil (an antagonist of central benzodiazepine receptors) as indirect and direct markers of neuronal loss, respectively, after focal cerebral ischemia. METHODS: Ten anesthetized baboons were submitted to sequential positron emission tomography studies between day 1 and day 91 after unilateral middle cerebral artery occlusion. The studies consisted of successive assessments, in the same positron emission tomography session, of [11C]PK 11195, [11C]flumazenil, cerebral blood flow, and oxygen consumption; late computed tomographic scans were obtained to map the approximate contours of infarction and to define a concentric peri-infarct area. RESULTS: We found a significant time-dependent increase in [11C]PK 11195 uptake in the peri-infarcted area, maximum at 20 to 40 days after occlusion. In contrast, there was a time- and perfusion-independent significant decrease in [11C]flumazenil uptake in the infarcted area, stable from day 2 onward, and already present in one baboon at day 1. Challenge studies with saturating doses of cold ligands confirmed that these changes represented alterations in specific binding. [11C]Flumazenil uptake was not affected in hypometabolic (but apparently noninfarcted, ie, deafferented) cortical areas. CONCLUSIONS: The delayed and apparently transient increases in [11C]PK 11195 specific uptake in vivo presumably represent glial/macrophage reaction; the marked depression in [11C]flumazenil specific binding, which appears selective for synaptic damage, is both precocious and sustained and thus may be better suited for the early assessment of ischemic damage in humans.

Determination of 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose rate constants in the anesthetized baboon brain with dynamic positron tomography.

We have determined the rate constants (ki*) of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) in the unlesioned baboon brain, for use in positron emission tomography (PET) measurements of glucose utilization. In contrast to earlier reports, we used a radiosynthesis which guarantees production of FDG essentially uncontaminated by fluorodeoxymannose, and an improved determination of ki* by (1) direct measurement of the time-shift between bolus arrival in femoral arterial plasma and brain, (2) rapid initial PET frames, and (3) extended data acquisition (up to 180 min). Young adult baboons were studied under anesthesia with either phencyclidine or etomidate. The FDG time-activity curves obtained from temporal grey matter showed a consistent decline after about 80 min, indicating true product loss. Three-compartment modelling was performed for increasing fitting intervals (20-120 min) with both a 5-parameter (K1*-k4*, and vascular volume (Vo)) and a 4-parameter (K1*-k3*,Vo) model. With the latter, both the calculated FDG net clearance ((K* = K1*.k3*/(k2* + k3*)) and the fitted kinetic constants were dependent on fitting interval, i.e., they showed sustained unstability. With the former, the constant k4*, which presumably represents dephosphorylation, was overestimated and unstable for short fitting times (presumably due to heterogeneous brain compartments in the sample tissue), but stabilized at approximately 0.01 min-1 for fitting times > or = 80 min; K1*-k3* and K* were also stable after this time. These findings were identical for both anesthetic regimen. Thus, in the anesthetized baboon, the FDG ki* values can be reliably determined based on an adequate PET acquisition paradigm and with a model that incorporates k4* and > or = 80 min time-activity data.