DataLab for photonics and lasers#

The problem#

Aligning a laser bench or characterizing an optical setup means extracting quantitative measurements from camera images: beam size at several positions along the propagation axis, fringe radii on an interferogram, intensity profiles. Doing this with vendor beam-profiling software locks you to one camera; doing it with scripts means rebuilding ROI handling, calibration and visualization from scratch.

What DataLab does#

DataLab works on images and the signals extracted from them, in the same workspace:

  • load a whole folder of camera images at once,

  • threshold, define regions of interest, apply linear calibration,

  • extract line or radial intensity profiles and fit them (Gaussian and other models) to get FWHM and beam size,

  • detect contours and fit them to circles to measure interferogram fringe radii,

  • repeat the same analysis on a stack of images and plot, e.g., the beam size as a function of the position along the propagation axis.

../_images/181.png

Beam size along the propagation axis, computed from a stack of camera images in DataLab.#

Proof in production#

DataLab was created for the plasma diagnostics of CEA’s Laser Megajoule facility – one of the world’s largest laser facilities – where it processes images and signals from cameras and digitizers, and is also used for laser alignment and metrology R&D activities around the facility.

Try it#