Software for fast cameras and image handling on MAST

Abstract

The rapid progress in fast imaging gives new opportunities for fusion research. The data obtained by fast cameras play an important and ever-increasing role in analysis and understanding of plasma phenomena. The fast cameras produce a huge amount of data which creates considerable problems for acquisition, analysis, and storage. We use a number of fast cameras on the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST). They cover several spectral ranges: broadband visible, infra-red and narrow band filtered for spectroscopic studies. These cameras are controlled by programs developed in-house. The programs provide full camera configuration and image acquisition in the MAST shot cycle. Despite the great variety of image sources, all images should be stored in a single format. This simplifies development of data handling tools and hence the data analysis. A universal file format has been developed for MAST images which supports storage in both raw and compressed forms, using either lossless or lossy compression. A number of access and conversion routines have been developed for all languages used on MAST. Two movie-style display tools have been developed—Windows native and Qt based for Linux. The camera control programs run as autonomous data acquisition units with full camera configuration set and stored locally. This allows easy porting of the code to other data acquisition systems. The software developed for MAST fast cameras has been adapted for several other tokamaks where it is in regular use.