Segmentation of MHD modes using Fourier transform, wavelets and computer vision algorithms

Abstract

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activity in fusion devices is typically analyzed by examining time-frequency spectrograms obtained from various diagnostics. MHD modes often co-exist with various types of noise and complex patterns generated by other events like pellet injection or active diagnostics. Traditionally, identifying MHD modes has been a manual task, making it labor-intensive. To overcome this issue, this study proposes the use of computer vision (CV) algorithms for noise removal and automatic feature extraction. First, the automatic detection of straight-line patterns is achieved by applying the Hough transform. Then, the discrete wavelet transform is proposed to break down spectrograms into sub-images of different scales, removing broadband noise and pellet injection signatures. The multiscale decomposition is subsequently extended to multiple directions using either 2D Fourier transforms or curvelets, achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio in spectrograms and eliminating undesired frequency sweeps of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes antenna. Once MHD activity is successfully enhanced, a pipeline of algorithms for ridge detection, thresholding and labeling perform a segmentation of the image, automatically labeling individual modes. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of CV algorithms for the identification of MHD modes. The use of such algorithms may potentially help in the analysis process and the creation of large databases of modes.