CCD Camera Image Server

[Brian Tieman <tieman@aps.anl.gov>]

Due to lack of time at the beamline controls meeting, I did not get a
chance to talk about my CCD Image Serving software.  Many CATs mentioned
they used CCD cameras of various sorts and were still using the vendor
supplied software.  I'd like to present here (and hopefully at a
beamline controls meeting in the not too distant future) what has been
done in SRICAT and is freely availiable to any with an interest.

Below is a paraphrase of the few slides I had hoped to present.  The
full documentation can be found at
URL:http://www.aps.anl.gov/xfd/SRIE/SoftDev/SRIESofDevHome.htm The
documentation for the CCD Image Server is entirely in HTML
format?although I?m not sure if you can get to it from outside the
firewall.  If you can not view the full documentation, please contact me
and we can either discuss the software or I can package the
documentation in some other way.  Tim and I have discussed creating a
link on the BCDA pages and hopefully this will happen in the near
future.


CCD Image Server

Current Capabilities:

Critical functionality available through both window and EPICS (PCAS)
interfaces--the software acts like a windows GUI and an IOCServer at the
same time

Supported camera systems
    Roper Scientific--Princeton Instruments interface (EasyDLLs)
    Roper Scientific--Photometrics (PCI bus only) interface
    MicroImager II from QImaging systems
    Andor Technologies
    Twain
    Others as needed (each new camera system typically takes ~1 week to
implement)

Camera Features
    Multiple ROIs
    Binning
    Exposure time control
    Temperature control
    Camera specific features are implemented as needed

ROI Features
    Basic image acquisition and file generation
    Background subtraction
    Simple statistics (centroid, FWHM, peak, average, etc?)
    Multiple image integration

File formats
    HDF with user configurable meta-data obtainable from PVs or internal
variables
    16 bit paletteless TIFF
    Raw binary

Future Plans:

Support new CCDs and other 2D imagers
    More ROI types
    Elliptical ROIs
    Masked ROIs
    More advanced ROI calculations
    Port to Linux (either PCAS server or iocCore)
    More advanced data visualization


This system is currently used by three of the four SRICAT beamlines as
well as the FEL project and a few non-beamline CCD camera systems.  It
has been relieably controlled by the scan record, spec, idl, java, medm
and Tcl/Tk although any EPICS client could do the job.

While generally useful for any 2D imaging application, I?ll provide a
few details about its use in tomography as an example of the utility and
robustness of this system.  Plans are in the works to make the system
more specifically usefull to other projects such as diffraction type
experiments as well.

Tomography
 A java based control interface has been developed to control the entire
tomography experiment from beamline setup through to completed
reconstructions.  Using this system, the CCD Image Server recently
acquired over 60GB of data in a single 5 day run period without a
failure.  During this run period, users interacted directly with the
windows GUI to align and prepare samples?then immediately turned to the
java control script which then used Channel Access to control the
beamline and camera to acquire complete data sets while unattended.
 Virtually every function of the Image Server is controllable through
Channel Access.  Some of these functions include setting exposure time,
setting ROIs, setting file names, pushing the acquire button, etc?  For
a complete list, please refer the the online documentation or contact me
directly.
 The tomography program makes use of several different camera systems
from different vendors.  The CCD Image Server is capable of controlling
them all and providing a uniform user interface for our camera systems.
The level of integration we have achieved in tomopraphy experiments
could not be accomplished if we had to rely on CCD Vendor software.


Even though I do not work in BCDA, the general usefulness of this
project is well understood in my group and I have the development time
necessary to further develop this tool as the general user community
sees fit.  If this software is something anyone is interested in,
contact me and we can discuss details.

Thanks for your time?

Brian Tieman
tieman@aps.anl.gov
XFE