USCT data challenge 2019

Recent years have witnessed the active development of scanning systems and reconstructionalgorithms for ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) with applications to breast imagingfor early cancer detection. Despite these advances in hardware and software development,we encounter the need for reference data to develop, test and compare different imagingmethods. With the goals of encouraging scientific exchange and collaborations, providingbenchmarks of reconstruction algorithms, and standardizing USCT data formats, we havereleased open-source data sets of simulated waveforms that mimic measurements of a USCTscanning aperture using numerical breast phantoms. This is part of ongoing efforts centeredaround the USCT platform for data exchange and collaboration

Fast Auto-adaptive Gain Adaption for Improved Signal Dynamics

In our 3D Ultrasound Computer Tomography system (USCT), the 12 bit ADC and factor 10 VGA are insufficient to resolve the smallest interesting signals. An adaptive front-end gain can solve this by object specific adaptions during the measurement. The 3D USCT II of the KIT device contains 157 Transmitter Array System (TAS). Each TAS has 13 piezoelectric transducers, corresponding analog signal front end (AFE) and an MSP430FG66xx series microcontroller (MCU). All TAS are connected to a control board through a two-wire serial bus system. Direct Memory Access (DMA) was used in the hardware to control the interrupt of the Universal Serial Communication Interfaces module (USCI). To complete the data transfer without occupying the MCUs of the TAS. A location-based general call was developed in the control system. The host transmits one frame long message to all TAS in a general call mode. This message contains the configurations of all TAS for the next measurement step. The address of each TAS corresponds to the location of each configuration in the long message. Thus, in the broadcast mode, each TAS only obtains the configuration information required by itself. With these two improvements, to configure all of the TAS can be reduced to less than 3 ms, which is the shortest measurement interval. The here proposed solution allows a fast dynamic control of the front-end electronics during measurement without extending the measurement time significantly

Interactive grid-access using GridSolve and Giggle

General purpose Problem Solving Environments (PSEs) like Matlab are widely used in the fields of science for development of new algorithms. If a lot of computing power is required to run these algorithms, today's PSEs lack support for accessing the distributed infrastructures of the organisation (i.e. grids), which limits the size of the problems that can be solved. This contribution shows a new approach to utilize the grid from within PSEs without major adjustments by the user. The primary tools are GridSolve and and the grid-middleware gLite. The applicability is illustrated by an exemplary algorithm (Mandelbrot calculations)

Transceiver ASIC in HVCMOS Technology for 3D Ultrasound Computer Tomography

Abstract3D Ultrasound Computer Tomography (3D USCT) is an imaging method for the early de-tection of breast cancer. It provides three-dimensional multimodal images of the breast. Thenew 3D USCT device developed currently at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology containsmore than two thousand ultrasound transducers placed in a water-filled aperture where thepatient submerges one breast. The ultrasound transducers are grouped as transducer arraysystems (TAS) of 18 receiver (RX) and transmitter (TX) elements. The transducer front-end electronics contain high-voltage (HV) and low-voltage (LV) amplifiers and switcheswhich are implemented as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). This contribu-tion presents a patented mixed signal, multichannel, transceiver ASIC developed in a com-mercial 350 nm high-voltage CMOS (HV-CMOS) process. The HV-CMOS process provideslow-voltage and high-voltage transistors that can be combined on the same substrate. TheHV transistors can sustain voltages up to 120 V

IRAS F02044+0957: radio source in interacting system of galaxies

The steep spectrum of IRAS F02044+0957 was obtained with the RATAN-600 radio telescope at four frequencies. Optical spectroscopy of the system components, was carried out with the 2.1m telescope of the Guillermo Haro Observatory. Observational data allow us to conclude that this object is a pair of interacting galaxies, a LINER and a HII galaxy, at $z=0.093$.Comment: 2 pages, 2 EPS-figures, uses newpasp.sty. To appear in Proc. IAU Colloq. 184, AGN Surveys, ed. R. F. Green, E. Ye. Khachikian, & D. B. Sanders (San Francisco: ASP

Catalog of Radio Galaxies with z>0.3. I:Construction of the Sample

The procedure of the construction of a sample of distant ($z>0.3$) radio galaxies using NED, SDSS, and CATS databases for further application in statistical tests is described. The sample is assumed to be cleaned from objects with quasar properties. Primary statistical analysis of the list is performed and the regression dependence of the spectral index on redshift is found.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Plasma turbulence calculations on the Intel iPSC/860 (rx) hypercube

One approach to improving the real-time efficiency of plasma turbulence calculations is to use a parallel algorithm. A serial algorithm used for plasma turbulence calculations was modified to allocate a radial region in each node. In this way, convolutions at a fixed radius are performed in parallel, and communication is limited to boundary values for each radial region. For a semi-implicity numerical scheme (tridiagonal matrix solver), there is a factor of 3 improvement in efficiency with the Intel iPSC/860 machine using 64 processors over a single-processor Cray-II. For block-tridiagonal matrix cases (fully implicit code), a second parallelization takes place. The Fourier components are distributed in nodes. In each node, the block-tridiagonal matrix is inverted for each of allocated Fourier components. The algorithm for this second case has not yet been optimized. 10 refs., 4 figs

Constraining Type Ia Supernovae progenitors from three years of SNLS data

While it is generally accepted that Type Ia supernovae are the result of the explosion of a carbon-oxygen White Dwarf accreting mass in a binary system, the details of their genesis still elude us, and the nature of the binary companion is uncertain. Kasen (2010) points out that the presence of a non-degenerate companion in the progenitor system could leave an observable trace: a flux excess in the early rise portion of the lightcurve caused by the ejecta impact with the companion itself. This excess would be observable only under favorable viewing angles, and its intensity depends on the nature of the companion. We searched for the signature of a non-degenerate companion in three years of Supernova Legacy Survey data by generating synthetic lightcurves accounting for the effects of shocking and comparing true and synthetic time series with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Our most constraining result comes from noting that the shocking effect is more prominent in rest-frame B than V band: we rule out a contribution from white dwarf-red giant binary systems to Type Ia supernova explosions greater than 10% at 2 sigma, and than 20% at 3 sigma level.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, resubmitted to ApJ, figure 15 modifie