Tomographic reconstruction of 3D thermal plasma systems: a feasibility study

A preliminary investigation of tomographic reconstruction of arc plasma in three dimensions has been carried out. The main goal of this work was to define both the optimal experimental scheme for tomographic measurements and the most appropriate tomographic method with minimum constraints to obtain images of good quality in real situations. Numerical calculations were developed and performed to define a test case corresponding to an experimental device. The multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique (MART) was applied for reconstruction of the emission profile from the acquired projections. Numerical reconstruction from two, three, four and seven projections are presented and discussed in a theoretical three-dimensional (3D) transferred arc configuration. The dependence of the reconstructed image quality on both the projection directions and the noise level was studied. Numerical simulation demonstrated that MART was perfectly suitable for reconstructing satisfactory 3D emission and temperature profiles of the arc plasma with a four-view configuration, proving the feasibility and the utility of tomography to characterize a 3D plasma medium.