A simpler and faster method for determining the total radiated power emitted from a tokamak plasma in real-time has been developed. This quantity is normally calculated after the discharge by a deconvolution of line integrals from a bolometer camera. This time-consuming algorithm assumes constant emissivity on closed flux surfaces and therefore needs the exact magnetic equilibrium information. Thus, it is highly desirable to have a different, simpler way to determine the total radiated power in real-time without additional magnetic equilibrium information. The real-time calculation of the total radiated power is done by a summation over ten or 18 lines of sight selected out of a bolometer camera with 40 channels. The number of channels is restricted by the summation hardware. A new selection scheme, which uses a singular value decomposition, has been developed to select the required subset of line integrals from the camera. With this subset, a linear regression analysis was done against the radiated power calculated by the conventional algorithm. The selected channels are finally used with the regression coefficients as weighting factors to determine an estimation of the radiated power for subsequent discharges. This selection and the corresponding weighting factors can only be applied to discharges with a similar plasma shape, e.g., in our case the typical ASDEX upgrade elliptical divertor plasma. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.