P. R. Hobson

The design, construction and performance of the MICE scintillating fibre trackers

Charged-particle tracking in the international Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) will be performed using two solenoidal spectrometers, each instrumented with a tracking detector based on 350 mu m diameter scintillating fibres. The design and construction of the trackers is described along with the quality-assurance procedures, photon-detection system, readout electronics, reconstruction and simulation software and the data-acquisition system. Finally, the performance of the MICE tracker, determined using cosmic rays, is presented

Challenges in using GPUs for the reconstruction of digital hologram images

In-line holographic imaging is used for small particulates, such as cloud or spray droplets, marine plankton, and alluvial sediments, and enables a true 3D object field to be recorded at high resolution over a considerable depth. To reconstruct a digital hologram a 2D FFT must be calculated for every depth slice desired in the replayed image volume. A typical in-line hologram of ~ 100 micrometre-sized particles over a depth of a few hundred millimetres will require O(1000) 2D FFT operations to be performed on an hologram of typically a few million pixels. In previous work we have reported on our experiences with reconstruction on a computational grid. In this paper we discuss the technical challenges in making efficient use of the NVIDIA Tesla and Fermi GPU systems and show how our reconstruction code was optimised for near real-time video slice reconstruction with holograms as large as 4K by 4K pixels. We also consider the implications for grid and cloud computing approaches to hologram replay, and the extent to which a GPU can replace these approaches, when the important step of locating focussed objects within a reconstructed volume is included.

Challenges in using GPUs for the real-time reconstruction of digital hologram images

In-line holography has recently made the transition from silver-halide based recording media, with laser reconstruction, to recording with large-area pixel detectors and computer-based reconstruction. This form of holographic imaging is an established technique for the study of fine particulates, such as cloud or fuel droplets, marine plankton and alluvial sediments, and enables a true 3D object field to be recorded at high resolution over a considerable depth. The move to digital holography promises rapid, if not instantaneous, feedback as it avoids the need for the time-consuming chemical development of plates or film film and a dedicated replay system, but with the growing use of video-rate holographic recording, and the desire to reconstruct fully every frame, the computational challenge becomes considerable. To replay a digital hologram a 2D FFT must be calculated for every depth slice desired in the replayed image volume. A typical hologram of ~100 μm particles over a depth of a few hundred millimetres will require O(103) 2D FFT operations to be performed on a hologram of typically a few million pixels. In this paper we discuss the technical challenges in converting our existing reconstruction code to make efficient use of NVIDIA CUDA-based GPU cards and show how near real-time video slice reconstruction can be obtained with holograms as large as 4096 by 4096 pixels. Our performance to date for a number of different NVIDIA GPU running under both Linux and Microsoft Windows is presented. The recent availability of GPU on portable computers is discussed and a new code for interactive replay of digital holograms is presented.