The detectors for the three first generation extremely large telescope (ELT) instruments MICADO (Multi‐AO Imaging Camera for Deep Observations), HARMONI (A High Angular Resolution Monolithic Optical ...and Near‐infrared Integral Field Spectrograph), and METIS (A Mid‐infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph) cover from the optical to longwave infrared wavelengths. MICADO and HARMONI detector focal planes require 17 ×$$ \times $$ H4RG (Hawaii‐4RG) near‐infrared whilst the METIS focal planes consist of 5 ×$$ \times $$ SWIR (shortwave infrared) detectors and one longwave infrared detector. Procurement of the optical and SWIR detectors has been completed, whilst the H4RGs and long wavelength detectors are still in progress. A custom cryogenic facility for infrared array testing (FIAT) has been designed and developed at European Southern Observatory (ESO) over the last few years in order to characterize the infrared detectors for ELT and future Very Large Telescope instruments. FIAT is currently being commissioned in our labs with an H4RG engineering detector. FIAT will be used to characterize the science H4RG‐15 detectors for MICADO and HARMONI, the two first‐light instruments of the ELT while the existing Mosaic Test Facility (MTF) will be used for characterizing the SWIR detectors for METIS. This paper presents an overview of the detector systems for the three instruments, their engineering challenges, and the requirements for the detectors' performance and their characterization program. The paper will also describe a test setup for H4RG detectors including a new preamplifier design with options to operate the detector in different modes and it will also report on the test results from the engineering H4RG detector, as part of the commissioning of FIAT and discuss detector performance and related detector issues.
SOXS will be the new spectroscopic facility for the ESO NTT telescope able to
cover the optical and NIR bands by using two different arms: the UV-VIS
(350-850 nm), and the NIR (800-2000 nm). In this ...article, we describe the
development status of the visible camera cryostat, the architecture of the
acquisition system and the progress in the electronic design. The UV-VIS
detector system is based on a CCD detector 44-82 from e2v, a custom detector
head, coupled with the ESO continuous flow cryostats (CFC), a custom cooling
system, based on a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), and the New General
Controller (NGC) developed by ESO. This paper outlines the development status
of the system, describes the design of the different parts that make up the
UV-VIS arm and is accompanied by a series of information describing the SOXS
design solutions in the mechanics and in the electronics parts. The first tests
of the detector system with the UV-VIS camera will be shown.
The scientific detector systems for the ESO ELT first-light instruments, HARMONI, MICADO, and METIS, together will require 27 science detectors: seventeen 2.5 \(\mu\)m cutoff H4RG-15 detectors, four ...4K x 4K 231-84 CCDs, five 5.3 \(\mu\)m cutoff H2RG detectors, and one 13.5 \(\mu\)m cutoff GEOSNAP detector. This challenging program of scientific detector system development covers everything from designing and producing state-of-the-art detector control and readout electronics, to developing new detector characterization techniques in the lab, to performance modeling and final system verification. We report briefly on the current design of these detector systems and developments underway to meet the challenging scientific performance goals of the ELT instruments.
AIM To treated with electrochemotherapy(ECT) a prospective case series of patients with liver cirrhosis and Vp3-Vp4- portal vein tumor thrombus(PVTT) from hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC), in order to ...evaluate the feasibility, safety and efficacy of this new non thermal ablative technique in those patients. METHODS Six patients(5 males and 1 female), aged 61-85 years(mean age, 70 years), four in Child-Pugh A and two in Child-Pugh B class, entered our study series. All patients were studied with three-phase computed tomography(CT), contrast enhanced ultrasound(CEUS) and ultrasound-guided percutaneous biopsy of the thrombus before ECT. All patients underwent ECT treatment(Cliniporator Vitae?, IGEA Sp A, Carpi, Modena, Italy) of Vp3-Vp4 PVTT in a single session. At the end of the procedure a post-treatment biopsy of the thrombus was performed. Scheduled follow-up in all patients entailed: CEUS within 24 h after treatment; triphasic contrastenhanced CT and CEUS at 3 mo after treatment and every six months thereafter.RESULTS Post-treatment CEUS showed complete absence of enhancement of the treated thrombus in all cases. Post-treatment biopsy showed apoptosis and necrosis of tumor cells in all cases. The follow-up ranged from 9 to 20 mo(median, 14 mo). In 2 patients, the followup CT and CEUS demonstrated complete patency of the treated portal vein. Other 3 patients showed a persistent avascular non-tumoral shrinked thrombus at CEUS and CT during follow-up. No local recurrence was observed at follow-up CT and CEUS in 5/6 patients. One patient was lost to follow-up because of death from gastrointestinal hemorrage 5 wk after ECT. CONCLUSION In patients with cirrhosis, ECT seems effective and safe for curative treatment of Vp3-Vp4 PVTT from HCC.
The PRIMA fringe sensor unit Sahlmann, Johannes; Menardi, Serge; Abuter, Roberto ...
arXiv.org,
12/2009
Paper, Journal Article
Odprti dostop
The Fringe Sensor Unit (FSU) is the central element of the Phase Referenced Imaging and Micro-arcsecond Astrometry (PRIMA) dual-feed facility and provides fringe sensing for all observation modes, ...comprising off-axis fringe tracking, phase referenced imaging, and high-accuracy narrow-angle astrometry. It is installed at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and successfully servoed the fringe tracking loop during the initial commissioning phase. Unique among interferometric beam combiners, the FSU uses spatial phase modulation in bulk optics to retrieve real-time estimates of fringe phase after spatial filtering. A R=20 spectrometer across the K-band makes the retrieval of the group delay signal possible. The FSU was integrated and aligned at the VLTI in summer 2008. It yields phase and group delay measurements at sampling rates up to 2 kHz, which are used to drive the fringe tracking control loop. During the first commissioning runs, the FSU was used to track the fringes of stars with K-band magnitudes as faint as m_K=9.0, using two VLTI Auxiliary Telescopes (AT) and baselines of up to 96 m. Fringe tracking using two Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescopes (UT) was demonstrated. During initial commissioning and combining stellar light with two ATs, the FSU showed its ability to improve the VLTI sensitivity in K-band by more than one magnitude towards fainter objects, which is of fundamental importance to achieve the scientific objectives of PRIMA.
Hypothermic oxygenated machine perfusion (HOPE) has the potential to counterbalance the detrimental consequences of cold and warm ischemia time (WIT) in both donation after brain death (DBD) and ...donation after circulatory death (DCD). Herein we investigated the protective effects of HOPE in extended criteria donor (ECD) DBD and overextended WIT DCD grafts. The present retrospective case series included 50 livers subjected to end‐ischemic HOPE or dual DHOPE in 2 liver transplantation (LT) centers from January 2018 to December 2019. All DCD donors were subjected to normothermic regional perfusion before organ procurement. Results are expressed as median (interquartile range IQR). In the study period, 21 grafts were derived from overextended WIT DCD donors (total WIT 54 IQR, 40‐60 minutes and 75% classified as futile), whereas 29 were from ECD DBD. A total of 3 biliary complications and 1 case of ischemia‐type biliary lesion were diagnosed. The rate of early allograft dysfunction (EAD) was 20%, and those patients had higher Comprehensive Complication Index scores. Through a changing point analysis, cold preservation time >9 hours was associated with prolonged hospital stays (P = 0.02), higher rates of EAD (P = 0.009), and worst post‐LT complications (P = 0.02). Logistic regression analyses indicated a significant relationship between cold preservation time and EAD. No differences were shown in terms of the early post‐LT results between LTs performed with DCD and DBD. Overall, our data are fully comparable with benchmark criteria in LT. In conclusion, the application of DHOPE obtained satisfactory and promising results using ECD‐DBD and overextended DCD grafts. Our findings indicate the need to reduce cold preservation time also in the setting of DHOPE, particularly for grafts showing poor quality.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobehavioral disorder with known brain abnormalities but no biomarkers to support clinical diagnosis. Recently, EEG analysis methods such as ...functional connectivity have rekindled interest in using EEG for ADHD diagnosis. Most studies have focused on resting-state EEG, while connectivity during sleep and spindle activity has been underexplored. Here we present the results of a preliminary study exploring spindle-related connectivity as a possible biomarker for ADHD. We compared sensor-space connectivity parameters in eight children with ADHD and nine age/sex-matched healthy controls during sleep, before, during, and after spindle activity in various frequency bands. All connectivity parameters were significantly different between the two groups in the delta and gamma bands, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in the gamma band distinguished ADHD from healthy subjects. Cluster coefficient and path length values in the sigma band were also significantly different between epochs, indicating different spindle-related brain activity in ADHD.
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