36 research outputs found
An optical recording system based on a fast CCD sensor for biological imaging
No full textThis paper presents technical details, hardware and software of a complete imaging system which uses a fast CCD sensor and a 41 Msample/s A/D converter to acquire full-frame 12 bit/pixel digitized images with a time resolution of 1.25 ms/image. This apparatus permits to resolve intracellular Ca2+ gradients in individual cells as well as the spatio-temporal pattern of neural activity of cell assemblies in neural tissue
Monte Carlo studies of the COMPASS RICH 1 optical properties
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. Monte Carlo studies of the COMPASS RICH 1 optical properties. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 433. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV; 1999: 401-405.A dedicated Monte Carlo has been built to study the optical properties of the RICH 1 detector presently under construction for the COMPASS experiment at CERN. In this paper we focus on the optimization of the position of the photon detector with respect to the RICH mirror and on the alignment of the mirror elements forming the mirror surface. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
The COMPASS RICH project
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. The COMPASS RICH project. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 433. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV; 1999: 207-211.The set-up of the COMPASS experiment (NA58 at CERN SPS) consists of two spectrometers (a large-angle one followed by a small-angle spectrometer) both equipped with a gas RICH (RICH 1 and RICH 2) for hadron identification. RICH 1 is currently under construction, while RICH 2 will be added at a second stage. RICH 1 design parameters and technological choices are discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
The COMPASS RICH1 detector
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. The COMPASS RICH1 detector. In: Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements. Nucl.Phys.Proc.Suppl. Vol 78. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV; 1999: 354-359.A large acceptance gas RICH detector is presently under construction for the spectrometer of the COMPASS Experiment. Tts design parameters are presented and the main characteristics of the vessel, the mirrors system, the photon detectors and the front-end electronics are-discussed together with some results from prototyping activities
RICHONE: a software package for the analysis of COMPASS RICH-1 data
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. RICHONE: a software package for the analysis of COMPASS RICH-1 data. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 502. Elsevier Science BV; 2003: 315-317.RICHONE is the pattern recognition and PID code for COMPASS RICH-1. RICHONE is part of CORAL, the COMPASS software system, a C++ framework developed within the collaborations using up-to-date techniques and tools. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
BORA: a front end board, with local intelligence, for the RICH detector of the Compass Collaboration
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. BORA: a front end board, with local intelligence, for the RICH detector of the Compass Collaboration. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 433. ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV; 1999: 426-431.In this paper we describe the design of the re-configurable front-end boards (BORA boards) for the 82944 channel RICH-1 (Ring Imaging CHerenkov) of the Compass Collaboration (NA58). The front-end electronics controls the sample-and-hold operation after the arrival of an event trigger, acquires the analog voltages from the pre-amp VLSI and converts them into 10 bits at a rate of 20 Ms/s per analog channel. The digitized analogue values are then written into FIFOs. A subsequent operation compares the readings of each and every channel with corresponding programmable thresholds, and transmits those values larger than the threshold, together with the channel number, through an optical fiber to subsequent processing stages of the acquisition system. The overall operation of the board is controlled and supervised by a fast DSP. The availability of local intelligence allows the board to present innovative features such as: to be part of a computer network that connects several similar boards of the detector with a PC. The presence of the DSP allows testing the operability and linearity of the analog channels; and creating engineering frames containing local temperatures and voltages and transmitting the results through the network. The operator can reconfigure the hardware and software of the board by downloading programs from the PC. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
The COMPASS RICH-1 read-out system
No full textBaum G, Birsa R, Bradamante F, et al. The COMPASS RICH-1 read-out system. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 502. Elsevier Science BV; 2003: 246-250.This paper describes the reconfigurable read-out system for the 82944 RICH-1 channels of the COMPASS experiment (NA58) at CERN. The system is based on 192 identical large front-end boards (BORA board). BORA was designed for acquiring, digitizing, threshold subtracting and transmitting event data. The overall operation of the board is controlled and supervised by a DSP tightly interacting with an FPGA that acts as a parallel co-processor. The DSP allows characterizing each analog channel by locally calculating noise and pedestal. Each BORA communicates with the outside world through two optical fibers and through a dedicated DSP network. One optical fiber is used to receive event triggers, and the other one is used to transmit event data to subsequent processing stages of the acquisition system. The DSP network allows reconfiguring and reprogramming the DSPs and FPGAs as well as acquiring sample events to visualize the overall operation of the system. The whole RICH has eight DSP networks working in parallel. These networks are handled by DOLINA. a PC resident multiprocessor board containing eight DSPs. Each network is formed by 24 BORA DSPs and I DOLINA DSP. The read-out system can steadily work up to a trigger rate of 75 kHz with maximum pixel occupancy of 20%, reaching a transmission data rate of 5.13 Gbytes/s. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
Intracellular gradients of free calcium visualized in sensory and neuronal cells by a high-performance fluorescence imaging system
No full textThis paper describes results obtained with a novel imaging system based on a fast CCD device. Sensor’s output was
digitized at 12 bit/pixel by customized electronics, reaching acquisition rates as high as 800 frames/s with a full-frame
resolution of 128 ́128 pixels. The software developed for the project permitted the sequential capture of thousands of
images directly to host PC RAM without frame loss even at the maximum readout rate (16 MHz). It is shown that the
high spatio-temporal resolution of this apparatus is of value when investigating the time-course of rapid intracellular Ca2+
fluorescence transients, particularly those associated with neuronal action potentials near physiological temperature
Status and characterisation of COMPASS RICH-1
No full textAlbrecht E, Baum G, Birsa R, et al. Status and characterisation of COMPASS RICH-1. In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A. Vol 553. Elsevier Science BV; 2005: 215-219.COMPASS RICH-1, a gas-radiator RICH detector with large transversal dimensions, which makes use of MWPC with CsI photocathodes as photon detectors, is in operation at COMPASS since 2001. The behaviour of the detector components is optimised and fully understood. The characterisation of the detector is now complete. We report about the detector status and its response in the COMPASS environment. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
