Jonathan Keelan

Size Distribution of Air Bubbles Entering the Brain during Cardiac Surgery

Background Thousands of air bubbles enter the cerebral circulation during cardiac surgery, but whether high numbers of bubbles explain post-operative cognitive decline is currently controversial. This study estimates the size distribution of air bubbles and volume of air entering the cerebral arteries intra-operatively based on analysis of transcranial Doppler ultrasound data. Methods Transcranial Doppler ultrasound recordings from ten patients undergoing heart surgery were analysed for the presence of embolic signals. The backscattered intensity of each embolic signal was modelled based on ultrasound scattering theory to provide an estimate of bubble diameter. The impact of showers of bubbles on cerebral blood-flow was then investigated using patient-specific Monte-Carlo simulations to model the accumulation and clearance of bubbles within a model vasculature. Results Analysis of Doppler ultrasound recordings revealed a minimum of 371 and maximum of 6476 bubbles entering the middle cerebral artery territories during surgery. This was estimated to correspond to a total volume of air ranging between 0.003 and 0.12 mL. Based on analysis of a total of 18667 embolic signals, the median diameter of bubbles entering the cerebral arteries was 33 μm (IQR: 18 to 69 μm). Although bubble diameters ranged from ~5 μm to 3.5 mm, the majority (85%) were less than 100 μm. Numerous small bubbles detected during cardiopulmonary bypass were estimated by Monte-Carlo simulation to be benign. However, during weaning from bypass, showers containing large macro-bubbles were observed, which were estimated to transiently affect up to 2.2% of arterioles. Conclusions Detailed analysis of Doppler ultrasound data can be used to provide an estimate of bubble diameter, total volume of air, and the likely impact of embolic showers on cerebral blood flow. Although bubbles are alarmingly numerous during surgery, our simulations suggest that the majority of bubbles are too small to be harmful.

Simulated annealing approach to vascular structure with application to the coronary arteries

Do the complex processes of angiogenesis during organism development ultimately lead to a near optimal coronary vasculature in the organs of adult mammals? We examine this hypothesis using a powerful and universal method, built on physical and physiological principles, for the determination of globally energetically optimal arterial trees. The method is based on simulated annealing, and can be used to examine arteries in hollow organs with arbitrary tissue geometries. We demonstrate that the approach can generate in silico vasculatures which closely match porcine anatomical data for the coronary arteries on all length scales, and that the optimized arterial trees improve systematically as computational time increases. The method presented here is general, and could in principle be used to examine the arteries of other organs. Potential applications include improvement of medical imaging analysis and the design of vascular trees for artificial organs.

Evaluation of the Athena/WFI instrumental background

The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of two focal plane instruments of the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (Athena), ESA’s next large X-ray observatory, planned for launch in the early 2030’s. In the aimed orbit, a halo orbit around L2, the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system the radiation environment, mainly consisting of solar and cosmic protons, electrons and He-ions, could affect the science performance. Furthermore as additional contribution the unfocused hard X-ray background is taken into account. It is important to understand and estimate the expected instrumental background and to investigate measures, like design modifications or analysis methods, which could improve the expected background level in order to achieve the challenging scientific requirement of < 5×10−3 cts/cm2/keV/s. For that purpose, the WFI background working group is investigating possible approaches, which will also be subject to technical feasibility studies. Finally an estimate of the WFI instrumental background for a proposed combination of design optimization and background rejection algorithm is given, showing that WFI is compliant with science background requirements.

Soft X-ray radiation damage in EM-CCDs used for Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

Advancement in synchrotron and free electron laser facilities means that X-ray beams with higher intensity than ever before are being created. The high brilliance of the X-ray beam, as well as the ability to use a range of X-ray energies, means that they can be used in a wide range of applications. One such application is Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS). RIXS uses the intense and tuneable X-ray beams in order to investigate the electronic structure of materials. The photons are focused onto a sample material and the scattered X-ray beam is diffracted off a high resolution grating to disperse the X-ray energies onto a position sensitive detector. Whilst several factors affect the total system energy resolution, the performance of RIXS experiments can be limited by the spatial resolution of the detector used. Electron-Multiplying CCDs (EM-CCDs) at high gain in combination with centroiding of the photon charge cloud across several detector pixels can lead to sub-pixel spatial resolution of 2–3 μm. X-ray radiation can cause damage to CCDs through ionisation damage resulting in increases in dark current and/or a shift in flat band voltage. Understanding the effect of radiation damage on EM-CCDs is important in order to predict lifetime as well as the change in performance over time. Two CCD-97s were taken to PTB at BESSY II and irradiated with large doses of soft X-rays in order to probe the front and back surfaces of the device. The dark current was shown to decay over time with two different exponential components to it. This paper will discuss the use of EM-CCDs for readout of RIXS spectrometers, and limitations on spatial resolution, together with any limitations on instrument use which may arise from X-ray-induced radiation damage.

Soft x-ray imaging with a newly designed large-area CCD (Conference Presentation)

SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The mission will study the dynamic interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. Two of the instruments, namely the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) and the Ultra-Violet Imager (UVI), will observe northern aurora and the boundary of the magnetosphere simultaneously, a first for space-missions. To complement these remote observations, in-situ measurements of the solar wind ion distribution as well as measurements of the strength of magnetic fields will be attained via the Light Ion Analyser (LIA) and the Magnetometer (MAG) respectively. Together, these four instruments will provide a complete picture of the interactions between the solar wind and the response of the Earth’s magnetosphere, which is the main driver of space-weather. The SXI will be used to observe and image Solar Wind Charge eXchange (SWCX) that occurs at the interface between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. At this location, ions in the solar wind interact with neutrals in the Earth’s exosphere leading to the production of soft X-rays with key emission lines at energies between 0.1-2 keV. The SXI will use a wide angle silicon micro pore optic to focus the incoming X-rays onto a focal plane of two large area Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) from Teledyne-e2v. The CCD for SXI is designated the CCD370, with 4510x4510 pixels of 18 µm, which will be read out with 6x6 on-chip binning to give an effective pixel size of 108 µm square. The binning improves charge transfer efficiency and energy resolution, and allows the pixel area to be divided into asymmetric frame and store regions of the device for frame-transfer operation. The CCD370 design includes a range of modifications from its predecessor (the CCD270 from the PLATO mission), with the goal of optimising it for imaging soft X-rays; a supplementary buried channel in the parallel region, a narrowed serial channel width, and increased output amplifier responsivity will improve the low signal sensitivity and charge transfer efficiency. Here, the CCD370 performance in the SXI telescope will be presented, predicted from the first measurements using the laboratory SXI CCD characterisation camera and CCD270s. The improvements expected from design changes that optimise the SXI CCDs for soft X-ray detection, and plans for pre-flight calibration and radiation damage testing will be described.

Predicting the particle-induced background for future x-ray astronomy missions: the importance of experimental validation for GEANT4 simulations

Particle-induced background, or “instrument background”, produced from the interaction of background photons and charged particles with a detector, either as primaries or through the generation of secondary photons or particles, is one of the major sources of background for the focal plane sensors in X-ray astronomy missions. In previous studies for the European Space Agency (ESA) X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM-Newton) mission, the dominant source of background was found to be caused by the knock-on electrons generated as high-energy protons pass through the shielding materials surrounding the detector. From XMM-Newton, the contribution of Compton and other photon-generated background was small in comparison to the knock-on electron component. However, for the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on board the ESA Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (ATHENA) mission Athena, which houses much thicker silicon in the depleted p-channel field effect transistor (DEPFET) active pixel sensors of the focal plane when compared to the Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) used in the XMM-Newton EPIC MOS cameras, this photon component may no longer be expected to have such a minimal impact and therefore both the photon and proton-induced components must be considered in more detail. In order to minimise the background, studies have been conducted on the use of a graded-Z shield in addition to an aluminium proton shield (employed for radiation damage minimization). For thin detectors, a low-Z component alone may suffice, reducing the fluorescence components of the background. However, with thicker detectors a high-Z component may give added benefit through the combination of the high-Z component to reduce the photon-induced effects and a low-Z component to reduce the fluorescence components from the shielding’s inner-surfaces, thus creating an “aluminium sandwich”. In all cases, careful optimization of the shielding configuration is required to balance each component of background specific to the design of the instrument involved. The optimization of any shielding relies heavily upon a validated and verified simulation toolkit. Here we present the latest progress on our ongoing validation and verification studies of the GEANT4 simulations used for such an optimization process through a series of experimental test campaigns.

Minimalistic real-space renormalization of Ising and Potts Models in two dimensions

We introduce and discuss a real-space renormalization group (RSRG) procedure on very small lattices, which in principle does not require any of the usual approximations, e.g. a cut-off in the expansion of the Hamiltonian in powers of the field. The procedure is carried out numerically on very small lattices (4x4 to 2x2) and implemented for the Ising Model and the q=3,4,5 Potts Models. Nevertheless, the resulting estimates of the correlation length exponent and the magnetization exponent are typically within 3% to 7% of the exact values. The 4-state Potts Model generates a third magnetic exponent which seems to be unknown in the literature. A number of questions about the meaning of certain exponents and the procedure itself arise from its use of symmetry principles and its application to the q=5 Potts Model.