Interactive Visualization for X-ray Instrument Design: XAS Journal Club, Roman Chernikov

Title: Interactive Visualization for X-ray Instrument Design and Troubleshooting
Speaker: Dr. Roman Chernikov (Canadian Light Source)
Abstract: X-ray tracing simulations are widely used in the optical systems design, where they provide valuable insights on projected performance. Depending on desired accuracy the models may include realistic X-ray sources, material properties (reflectivity curves), or wave effects (diffraction on edges, partial coherence); typical study usually requires pre-calculation of intensity maps by third-party programs in a specified angle/energy range. Certain attempts have been made to create a homogeneous environment that would bind all these steps together in a single workflow [1], however they are still suffering from limited interoperability between different modules, and data exchange still heavily relies on file IO operations, thus compromising the overall performance. We tried to overcome these limitations in xrt [2, 3], a full-featured python library for ray-tracing and wave propagation in X-ray regime. Built-in support for synchrotron and geometric sources, reflective, refractive and energy-dispersive optics, together with GPGPU acceleration allows calculating of intensities for each individual ray on the fly, solving a typical ray-tracing problem with millions of rays in a matter of seconds. We also provide an OpenGL-based 3D visualization widget that shows beams, footprints and optical surfaces in global coordinates with convenient scaling, rotation, rays coloring and highlighting capabilities. Live connection to a model editing GUI makes it a neat tool for optical systems design and troubleshooting, where one can interactively add/remove optical elements, change material properties, or investigate the effect of distortions and misalignment. My talk will include an overview of xrt capabilities and a live demo covering a typical XAS beamline visualization and comparison of different types of X-ray emission spectrometers.

Suggested reading:
1. L. Rebuffi, M. Sanchez del Rio, "OASYS (OrAnge SYnchrotron Suite): an open-source graphical environment for x-ray virtual experiments”, Proc. SPIE 10388, 103880S (2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2274263
2. K. Klementiev and R. Chernikov, “Powerful scriptable ray tracing package xrt”, Proc. SPIE 9209, 92090A (2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061400
3. https://xrt.readthedocs.io or https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1252468