Reconstruction of the Plasma Boundary of EAST Tokamak Using Visible Imaging Diagnostics

In order to reconstruct the plasma boundary directly and independently, a new method based on visible imaging diagnostics is developed for experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST); its effectiveness has been verified by conducting offline experiments based on EAST’s historical data. The offline boundary reconstruction results, including X-points, are compared to offline equilibrium fitting code (offline EFIT), which is a commonly used reconstruction method. With an average error of 1.5 cm, the total processing time for one frame is less than 2 ms by current software and hardware. When the camera sensor is not saturated, the algorithm is robust for different image intensities of the plasma discharge. The results of the boundary reconstruction by visible imaging diagnostics also show potential for real-time plasma control in a tokamak.