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At least 1,225 records · Page 68

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2016

TU-A-201-00: Image Guidance Technologies and Management Strategies

Recent years have seen a widespread proliferation of available in-room image guidance systems for radiation therapy target localization with many centers having multiple in-room options. In this session, available imaging systems for in-room IGRT will be reviewed highlighting the main differences in workflow efficiency, targeting accuracy and image quality as it relates to target visualization. Decision-making strategies for integrating these tools into clinical image guidance protocols that are tailored to specific disease sites like H&N, lung, pelvis, and spine SBRT will be discussed. Learning Objectives: Major system characteristics of a wide range of available in-room imaging systems for IGRT. Advantages / disadvantages of different systems for site-specific IGRT considerations. Concepts of targeting accuracy and time efficiency in designing clinical imaging protocols.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2016

TU-A-201-01: Introduction to In-Room Imaging System Characteristics

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2016

TU-A-201-02: Treatment Site-Specific Considerations for Clinical IGRT

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2019

Big Data Framework with Machine Learning for D and D Applications - 19108

The nuclear industry is experiencing a steady increase in maintenance costs even though plants are maintained under high levels of safety, capability and reliability. Nuclear power plants are expected to run every unit at maximum capacity at all times, efficiently utilizing assets with minimal downtime. Surveillance and maintenance of nuclear decommissioning infrastructure provides lot challenges with respect to maintenance or decommissioning of the buildings. There is a need for a framework to analyze the huge amount of data generated by the sensors on the nuclear reactor components as well as structures, to monitor the conditions of these building over a period of time. Emerging technologies such as big data analytics have become a requirement in the nuclear industry to improve structural health monitoring and diagnostics. FIU will make use of existing mature technologies in the areas of imaging, robotics, big data, and machine learning/deep learning to assess the structural integrity of aging facilities at DOE sites. As these facilities await decommissioning, there is a need to understand the structural health of these structures. Many of these facilities were built over 50 years ago and in some cases these facilities have gone beyond the operational life expectancy. In other cases, the facilities have been placed in a state of 'cold and dark' and they are sitting unused, awaiting decommissioning. Finally, some older facilities are one-of-a-kind operational/production facilities supporting critical DOE missions and cannot be shut down. In any of these scenarios, the structural integrity of these facilities may be compromised, so it is imperative that adequate inspections and data collection/analysis be performed on a continuous and ongoing basis. The primary goals of the research include collecting various formats of data such as structured, unstructured and streaming data from the various sensors deployed in buildings, collect videos/pictures from various imaging sources, ingest them using a Hadoop distributed file system and process the data using Spark to perform batch processing and real time analytics. Research and development on various machine learning/deep learning algorithms will also be performed to analyze the heterogeneous data collected from nuclear decommission infrastructure. FIU will design the big data framework to ingest, store and process huge amounts of heterogeneous data collected from many sources and optimize the algorithms to provide insights into the data and predict anomalies observed when compared against baseline conditions. Various modules of this framework will include heterogeneous data sources, message broker, Hadoop distributed file system, Spark for stream and batch processing, machine learning/ deep learning, Cassandra - persistent data store and visualization. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2014

Optimal experimental design for the detection of light atoms from high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy images

We report an innovative method to explore the optimal experimental settings to detect light atoms from scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images. Since light elements play a key role in many technologically important materials, such as lithium-battery devices or hydrogen storage applications, much effort has been made to optimize the STEM technique in order to detect light elements. Therefore, classical performance criteria, such as contrast or signal-to-noise ratio, are often discussed hereby aiming at improvements of the direct visual interpretability. However, when images are interpreted quantitatively, one needs an alternative criterion, which we derive based on statistical detection theory. Using realistic simulations of technologically important materials, we demonstrate the benefits of the proposed method and compare the results with existing approaches.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-J-211: Design and Study of In-House Software Based Respiratory Motion Monitoring, Controlling and Breath-Hold Device for Gated Radiotherapy

Purpose: The purpose of this present work was to fabricate an in-house software based respiratory monitoring, controlling and breath-hold device using computer software programme which guides the patient to have uniform breath hold in response to request during the gated radiotherapy. Methods: The respiratory controlling device consists of a computer, inhouse software, video goggles, a highly sensitive sensor for measurement of distance, mounting systems, a camera, a respiratory signal device, a speaker and a visual indicator. The computer is used to display the respiratory movements of the patient with digital as well as analogue respiration indicators during the respiration cycle, to control, breath-hold and analyze the respiratory movement using indigenously developed software. Results: Studies were conducted with anthropomophic phantoms by simulating the respiratory motion on phantoms and recording the respective movements using the respiratory monitoring device. The results show good agreement between the simulated and measured movements. Further studies were conducted for 60 cancer patients with several types of cancers in the thoracic region. The respiratory movement cycles for each fraction of radiotherapy treatment were recorded and compared. Alarm indications are provided in the system to indicate when the patient breathing movement exceeds the threshold level. This will help the patient to maintain uniform breath hold during the radiotherapy treatment. Our preliminary clinical test results indicate that our device is highly reliable and able to maintain the uniform respiratory motion and breathe hold during the entire course of gated radiotherapy treatment. Conclusion: An indigenous respiratory monitoring device to guide the patient to have uniform breath hold device was fabricated. The alarm feature and the visual waveform indicator in the system guide the patient to have normal respiration. The signal from the device can be connected to the radiation unit in near future to carry out the gated radiotherapy treatment.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

NanoPSD: A software for automatic detection of Nano-Particle Shape Distribution in electron microscopy images

Accurate quantification of the size and morphology of nanoparticles from electron microscopy (EM) images is essential to understand growth mechanisms, surface reactivity, and functional behavior in nanoscale materials. Manual analysis remains slow, subjective, and difficult to reproduce in large datasets. We introduce NanoPSD (Nano-Particle Shape Distribution), an open-source and fully automated framework for quantitative particle detection and morphology analysis from EM images. NanoPSD integrates adaptive contrast enhancement, polarity-agnostic scale-bar detection, Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based calibration, and classical segmentation via Otsu thresholding with morphological refinement. Particle contours are used to extract geometric descriptors, including equivalent circular diameter, aspect ratio, circularity, and solidity, enabling automated classification into spherical, rod-like, and aggregate morphologies. The framework supports both single-image and batch processing, generating publication-quality visualizations, LaTeX-ready tables, and structured comma-separated values (CSV) datasets. As a demonstration, we applied NanoPSD to plasma-synthesized nanoparticle samples diagnosed via transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The code produced statistically robust size and morphology distributions spanning a few to tens of nanometers with minimal user supervision. The pipeline demonstrates high reproducibility and scalability, processing large image collections with consistent calibration and output formatting. Its modular design enables seamless integration of future deep-learning-based segmentation models, providing a pathway toward intelligent, data-driven electron microscopy analysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2018

Visualizing the bidirectional optical transfer function for near-field enhancement in waveguide coupled plasmonic transducers

Here, we report visualizations of the bidirectional near-field optical transfer function for a waveguide-coupled plasmonic transducer as a metrology technique essential for successful development for mass-fabricated near-field devices. Plasmonic devices have revolutionized the observation of nanoscale phenomena, enabling optical excitation and readout from nanoscale regions of fabricated devices instead of as limited by optical diffraction. Visualizations of the plasmonic transducer modes were acquired both by local near-field excitation of the antenna on the front facet of a waveguide using the focused electron beam of a scanning electron microscope as a probe of the near-field cathodoluminescence during far-field collection from the back facet of the waveguide, and by local mapping of the optical near-field for the same antenna design using scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy as a probe of the near-field optical mode density for far-field light focused into the back facet of the waveguide. Strong agreement between both measurement types and numerical modeling was observed, indicating that the method enables crucial metrological comparisons of as fabricated device performance to as-modeled device expectations for heat-assisted magnetic recording heads, which can be extended to successful development of future near-field-on-chip devices such as optical processor interconnects.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2022

In situ imaging of three dimensional freeze printing process using rapid x-ray synchrotron radiography

Three dimensional freeze printing (3DFP) combines the advantages of freeze casting and additive manufacturing to fabricate multifunctional aerogels. Freeze casting is a cost-effective, efficient, and versatile method capable of fabricating micro-scale porous structures inside the aerogels for many different applications. The 3DFP provided the capability of fabricating highly customized geometries with controlled microporous structures as well. However, there are still many unexplained phenomena and features because of the complexity of post-processes and indirect observation methods. This study demonstrates the design and construction of the in situ imaging systems, which use the x-ray synchrotron radiography to observe freeze casting and 3DFP processes. With the advantages provided by the in situ x-ray imaging techniques, the ice crystal growth with its unique lamellar structures can be observed during the freeze casting process. Here, the movement of freeze front, material deposition, and growth of ice crystals can also be visualized during the inkjet-based 3DFP process.

3D printing↗

DOE OSTI2013

Deployment of High-Resolution Real-Time Distribution Level Metering on Maui

Abstract not provided

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2021

Programmable hyperbolic polaritons in van der Waals semiconductors

Lighting a route for hyperbolic dispersion The propagation of light within a material is usually well defined, with the propagation described by scattering and dispersion. In artificially designed metamaterials and in anisotropic layered materials, the dispersion can be hyperbolic, giving rise to subwavelength confinement of the light. Sternbach et al. show that the hyperbolic dispersion can be optically switched on and off on demand in the layered transition metal dichalcogenide tungsten diselenide (see the Perspective by Deng and Chen). Illuminating the material with ultrafast pulses of sub-bandgap light creates a transient waveguide, resulting in hyperbolic dispersion in the material. The ability to tune the dispersion characteristics on demand using optical pumping is an effective approach for developing ultrafast switching photonic devices and controlling the propagation of light on the nanoscale. Science , this issue p. 617 ; see also p. 572

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

DOE OSTI2022

LigninGraphs: lignin structure determination with multiscale graph modeling

Lignin is an aromatic biopolymer found in ubiquitous sources of woody biomass. Designing and optimizing lignin valorization processes requires a fundamental understanding of lignin structures. Experimental characterization techniques, such as 2D-heteronuclear single quantum coherence (HSQC) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra, could elucidate the global properties of the polymer molecules. Computer models could extend the resolution of experiments by representing structures at the molecular and atomistic scales. We introduce a graph-based multiscale modeling framework for lignin structure generation and visualization. The framework employs accelerated rejection-free polymerization and hierarchical Metropolis Monte Carlo optimization algorithms. We obtain structure libraries for various lignin feedstocks based on literature and new experimental NMR data for poplar wood, pinewood, and herbaceous lignin. The framework could guide researchers towards feasible lignin structures, efficient space exploration, and future kinetics modeling. Its software implementation in Python, LigninGraphs, is open-source and available on GitHub.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2018

Modeling City Building Stock for Large-Scale Energy Efficiency Improvements using CityBES

Buildings in San Francisco consumed 52% of total primary energy. Improving building energy efficiency is one of the key strategies cities are adopting towards their energy and climate goals. Urban building energy models (UBEM) can support city managers to evaluate and prioritize energy conservation measures for investment and to design effective incentive and rebate programs. This paper introduces methods to develop a standardized dataset of city building stock, and it demonstrates the use of a UBEM tool, City Building Energy Saver (CityBES), for an urban-scale energy retrofit analysis of building stock in the city of San Francisco. CityBES is an open web-based data and computing platform providing city-scale building energy modeling and performance visualization and benchmarking. CityBES utilizes an international standard CityGML to represent the three-dimensional building stock in cities. As an application example, 940 office and retail buildings in six districts of northeast San Francisco were modeled and analyzed with CityBES to evaluate energy savings for five selected measures. The analysis found that replacing existing lighting with LED and adding an air economizer to HVAC systems are cost-effective measures with combined savings per building between 17% to 31%. The CityBES retrofit analysis feature does not require users to have deep knowledge of building systems or building energy models, which helps overcome barriers for city managers and their consultants to adopt UBEM.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2023

Introduction to ALERT: A User-Interface Tool for Resilient Optimization

As the cyber-physical systems grow in complexity, there is a need for proactive resilience strategies that involve online, adaptive control actions to best prepare for any impending adversarial events. In this technical effort, supported by RD2C LDRD initiative, the project team designed and demonstrated online strategies – referred to as ALERT controls – for proactive and adaptive tuning of existing optimal controls in a microgrid, with quantifiably assured margins of resilience to various cyber-physical adversarial events. This ALERT functionality is made available to the end-users, e.g., the system operators, via an interactive user-interface. The end-users will not only be able to use the interface to visualize the system’s operation under various cyber-physical adversarial scenarios, but also evaluate the amount of tolerance the system has against selected adversarial perturbations of interest (e.g., malfunctioning sensors, suspected attacked measurements) via the adversarial plots. In this technical report, we briefly outline the algorithmic modules of the developed ALERT control technology, and introduce the user-interface tool that allows end-users (e.g., microgrid operators) to enter their system description, specify various operational and resilience requirements, and evaluate the impact of the control decisions via illustrative plots.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2020

An Experimental Feasibility Study on Applying Neutron Tomography to Encapsulated Spent Nuclear Fuel - 20050

Visual inspection makes easier to ensure the integrity and safety of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) than any classical techniques. Various classical techniques have been applied but there are no reliable methods to qualitatively and quantitatively verify spent fuel in dry storage. Thus, the present authors have developed the prototype safeguards apparatus for dry storage employing the array of He-4 gas scintillation detectors (S670E, Arktis Radiation Detectors Ltd., Switzerland), newly designed to simultaneously measure thermal and fast neutrons without any moderators. The S670E detector has a cylindrical shape with a diameter of 52 mm and active length of 600 mm (total length: 875 mm). The detector is filled by He-4 gas with an approximate pressure of 180 bar for fast neutron detection, and its inner wall is coated by Li-6 for thermal neutron detection. The scintillation lights generated via Li-6 nuclear reaction and elastic scattering are collected by 24 SiPMs linearly paired at the center of the detector. The detector delivers a TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) output for pulse readout and UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) for device control. In order to assess feasibility of the apparatus, an experimental system has been designed, built, and optimized via computational studies. Cf-252 neutron sources and linearly arrayed detectors, working as a single detector, were occupied for this study due to the difficulties in working with SNF. The laboratory scale cask (diameter: 0.67 m, height: 1.5 m), minimized by a factor of 10 compared to the actual thickness of a commercial TN-32 cask, was also manufactured. The detector array was designed to rotate the lab-scale cask and obtain 36 image profiles at every 10 degrees. All profiles were aligned in single frame image called a sinogram, and the cross-sectional image was then fabricated by the inverse radon transform algorithm. These experiments have been repeated with different configurations and numbers of sources. Some gamma-ray sources were also measured with neutron sources in order to distinguish between neutron and gamma-ray pulses. Basically, a He-4 detector is designed to run on Linux OS so it is difficult to directly apply to Windows-based equipment widely used in S. Korea. Therefore, a new data acquisition board working on Windows OS was designed and built. The board mainly consists of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and SoC (System on Chip) for TTL pulse readout, sorting measured data, and transferring data to a user interface. In conclusion, the tomographic system at lab-scale has shown considerable potential to detect a partial or gross defect of encapsulated assemblies in dry storage. Next steps of this study will be to 1) repeatedly carry out experiments to demonstrate scientific reliability and validity, and 2) numerically integrate signals with weight factors to enhance the image quality since the suggested system based on passive interrogation method requires longer measurement time. Finally, the system will apply to a commercial dry storage phased out soon in S. Korea. (authors)

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗

DOE OSTI2017

Structural and In Vivo Studies on Trehalose-6-Phosphate Synthase from Pathogenic Fungi Provide Insights into Its Catalytic Mechanism, Biological Necessity, and Potential for Novel Antifungal Drug Design

ABSTRACT The disaccharide trehalose is critical to the survival of pathogenic fungi in their human host. Trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (Tps1) catalyzes the first step of trehalose biosynthesis in fungi. Here, we report the first structures of eukaryotic Tps1s in complex with substrates or substrate analogues. The overall structures of Tps1 from Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus are essentially identical and reveal N- and C-terminal Rossmann fold domains that form the glucose-6-phosphate and UDP-glucose substrate binding sites, respectively. These Tps1 structures with substrates or substrate analogues reveal key residues involved in recognition and catalysis. Disruption of these key residues severely impaired Tps1 enzymatic activity. Subsequent cellular analyses also highlight the enzymatic function of Tps1 in thermotolerance, yeast-hypha transition, and biofilm development. These results suggest that Tps1 enzymatic functionality is essential for the fungal stress response and virulence. Furthermore, structures of Tps1 in complex with the nonhydrolyzable inhibitor, validoxylamine A, visualize the transition state and support an internal return-like catalytic mechanism that is generalizable to other GT-B-fold retaining glycosyltransferases. Collectively, our results depict key Tps1-substrate interactions, unveil the enzymatic mechanism of these fungal proteins, and pave the way for high-throughput inhibitor screening buttressed and guided by the current structures and those of high-affinity ligand-Tps1 complexes. IMPORTANCE Invasive fungal diseases have emerged as major threats, resulting in more than 1.5 million deaths annually worldwide. This epidemic has been further complicated by increasing resistance to all major classes of antifungal drugs in the clinic. Trehalose biosynthesis is essential for the fungal stress response and virulence. Critically, this biosynthetic pathway is absent in mammals, and thus, the two enzymes that carry out trehalose biosynthesis, namely, trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (Tps1) and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (Tps2), are prominent targets for antifungal intervention. Here, we report the first eukaryotic Tps1 structures from the pathogenic fungi Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus in complex with substrates, substrate analogues, and inhibitors. These structures reveal key protein-substrate interactions, providing atomic-level scaffolds for structure-guided drug design of novel antifungals that target Tps1.

Miao, Yi↗

DOE OSTI2019

Electric Field–Controlled Multistep Proton Evolution in H x SrCoO 2.5 with Formation of H–H Dimer

Ionic evolution–induced phase transformation can lead to wide ranges of novel material functionalities with promising applications. Here, using the gating voltage during ionic liquid gating as a tuning knob, the brownmillerite SrCoO2.5 is transformed into a series of protonated HxSrCoO2.5 phases with distinct hydrogen contents. The unexpected electron to charge-neutral doping crossover along with the increase of proton concentration from x = 1 to 2 suggests the formation of exotic charge neutral H–H dimers for higher proton concentration, which is directly visualized at the vacant tetrahedron by scanning transmission electron microscopy and then further supported by first principles calculations. Although the H–H dimers cause no change of the valency of Co2+ ions, they result in clear enhancement of electronic bandgap and suppression of magnetization through lattice expansion. These results not only reveal a hydrogen chemical state beyond anion and cation within the complex oxides, but also suggest an effective pathway to design functional materials through tunable ionic evolution.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2025

Testing of Fusion Machine Components Against Cryogenic Pellet Impacts

Shattered pellet injection (SPI), currently the most effective method of disruption mitigation, is currently implemented on tokamaks worldwide for experimental purposes. Cryogenic pellets are formed and fired into an angled surface before entering the plasma. The impact with the angled surface causes the pellets to fragment into a cloud of particles with the purpose of increasing the surface area for ablation. As pellets traverse guide tubes, depending on design, there is a chance of an off-normal pellet impact. Pellet impacts are also, depending on design, possible in the plasma chamber if not fully ablated and assimilated, or if the fragment plume is not directed in the proper direction. This paper outlines a series of pellet impact tests on various tiles and components relevant to the ITER, JET, and ASDEX Upgrade SPI systems. In conclusion, testing was done to assess the potential damage from pellet and fragment plume impacts through high-speed imaging and the visual inspection of components.

Cryogenic pellets↗