source: tags/release-1.1.13/CHANGES

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Updating CHANGES for release of 1.1.13

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1Duchamp version 1.1.13 (2011/04/10)
2-------------------------------------
3
4Bug fixes:
5
6* The median statistics calculations had a bug in the test for whether
7  the array under consideration was of even size. The correction for
8  this can mean small differences in the resulting values. This can
9  flow through to calculated detection thresholds - please check this
10  with your data if you use this mode!
11
12* The reconstruction code had a bug where the incorrect number of
13  scales was being used. This occurred when the blank pixel flag was
14  set, and when the spectral dimension was smaller than both the
15  spatial dimensions.
16
17Other:
18
19* The default value of the blank pixel flag has been set to false,
20  rather than true. For Duchamp, this should not matter, as it is set
21  when the FITS file is read in. For external code using, for
22  instance, the reconstruction algorithms, this default may be
23  important. Having it true was contributing to the second bug listed
24  above. It also makes more sense for it to be false unless explicitly
25  set in some way.
26
27* The reconstruction code has been streamlined a little, reducing its
28  memory impact and using more appropriate variable types
29  (eg. unsigned ints instead of ints and so forth).
30
31* For those who care about the actual code base, the statistics
32  functions have been expanded, and separated from getStats.cc into
33  "normal" and "robust" versions.
34
35
36Duchamp version 1.1.12 (2011/03/18)
37-------------------------------------
38
39Bug fixes:
40
41* The velocity width calculations had a bug that occasionally led to
42  very large values. The widths are calculated using the integrated
43  spectrum, using a threshold relative to its peak. In v.1.1.10 and
44  1.1.11, however, the peak was searched for over the entire spectral
45  range, rather than just the range for the current object. This led
46  to spurious values. This has been fixed, so that the peak is only
47  searched for within the detected ranage of the object.
48
49* Both the pixel and statistics subsections are now more carefully
50  examined, with errors reported if there are no valid pixels in the
51  pixel subsection, or if the statistics subsection does not intersect
52  with the pixel subsection.
53
54Other:
55
56* The configure script has been slightly improved so that the pgsbox
57  library is only added if PGPlot has been enabled - this is
58  particularly necessary with the slightly changed build procedure for
59  recent wcslib versions.
60
61* In a related note, one file - momentMap.cc - had some #include
62  statements that failed when PGPlot (and hence pgsbox in WCSLIB) was
63  not enabled. These were actually unnecesssary and have been removed.
64
65* There is a new input parameter - flagPlotSpectra - that allows the
66  user to turn off the production of the spectral plots. It defaults
67  to true (meaning the plots are produced).
68
69
70Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/03/01)
71-------------------------------------
72
73Improvements:
74
75* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
76  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
77  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
78  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
79
80* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
81  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
82  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
83  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
84  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
85
86* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
87  more information.
88
89Bug Fixes:
90
91* The statistics section (statSec) could be larger than the image
92  subsection (if provided), yet the pixels required would never be
93  read in from the FITS file. The behaviour has been changed so that
94  the statSec, if requested, is trimmed to be wholly within the image
95  section.
96
97* It was possible to request, for instance, spectral smoothing on a 2D
98  image. This resulted in a blank smoothed array, which led to
99  problems in the calculations of statistics (and hence the
100  threshold), as well as subsequent calculations. This has been fixed,
101  so that in cases like this the smoothing is turned off (and a
102  warning message is displayed).
103
104* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
105  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
106  fixed.
107
108* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
109  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
110
111* Writing text spectra would only occur when PGPlot output was enabled
112  in the build (it was combined with the plotting of the spectral
113  graphs). This has been changed so that this output can be requested
114  without requiring PGPlot.
115
116* The equation for the beam size in Sec.4.2 of the User Guide was
117  incorrect and has been fixed.
118
119* Minor change to the configure script to improve the detection of the
120  PGPlot library.
121
122Code development notes:
123
124* The main work has been additions and improvements to the interfaces
125  for the Param and the Section classes, as well as new classes to
126  manage the beam information. The efficiency changes mentioned above
127  also affected the internals of some of the PixelInfo classes, and
128  provided additional functions for judging the closeness of
129  neighbouring objects.
130
131Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
132-------------------------------------
133
134Improvements:
135
136* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
137  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
138  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
139  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
140  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
141  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
142  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
143  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
144  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
145  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
146  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
147  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
148
149* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
150  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
151  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
152  minor changes as well.
153
154* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
155  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
156  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
157
158* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
159  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
160  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
161  with running out of memory.
162
163* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
164
165* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
166  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
167  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
168  the plot.
169
170* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
171  functional change was made).
172
173Bug fixes:
174
175* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
176  fixed.
177
178* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
179  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
180  string). This has been fixed.
181
182* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
183  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
184  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
185
186* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
187  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
188  now work as expected.
189
190* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
191  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
192
193* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
194  covered by the verbose flag.
195
196* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
197
198* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
199  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
200
201Code development notes:
202
203* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
204  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
205  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
206  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
207  for finding the velocity widths.
208
209Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
210-------------------------------------
211
212Improvements:
213
214* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
215  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
216  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
217
218* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
219  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
220  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
221  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
222  suggesting this and the above improvement.
223
224* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
225  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
226  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
227  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
228  up all close matches.
229
230* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
231  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
232  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
233  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
234  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
235  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
236  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
237
238* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
239  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
240  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
241  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
242  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
243  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
244
245* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
246  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
247  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
248  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
249
250* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
251  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
252
253* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
254  functionality.
255
256Bug fixes:
257
258* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
259  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
260  large). This has been fixed.
261
262* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
263  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
264  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
265  noticeable depending on the dataset.
266
267* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
268  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
269  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
270
271* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
272  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
273  made more robust.
274
275* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
276  errors, which have been fixed.
277
278* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
279  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
280  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
281  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
282  rectified.
283
284* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
285
286
287Code development notes:
288
289  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
290  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
291  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
292  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
293
294* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
295  robust from a programming point of view.
296
297* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
298  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
299  work.
300
301* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
302  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
303  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
304  cleanly.
305
306* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
307  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
308  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
309  with them appropriately.
310
311
312Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
313----------------------------------
314
315Improvements:
316
317* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
318  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
319  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
320  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
321  the default behaviour stays the same.
322
323* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
324  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
325  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
326  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
327  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
328  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
329
330* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
331  the cube statistics are printed.
332
333
334Bug fixes:
335
336* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
337  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
338
339* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
340  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
341  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
342
343* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
344  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
345  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
346  coordinates. This has been fixed.
347
348* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
349  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
350  fine.
351
352* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
353  properly. This has been remedied.
354
355* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
356  flux units. This has been fixed.
357
358* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
359
360* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
361  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
362
363* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
364  again causing some compilers to fail.
365
366
367Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
368----------------------------------
369
370Improvements:
371
372* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
373  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
374  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
375  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
376  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
377
378* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
379  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
380  that Duchamp provides.
381
382* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
383  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
384  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
385  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
386
387* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
388  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
389  file has something in it.
390
391* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
392  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
393  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
394  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
395
396* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
397  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
398  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
399  around at a later date.
400
401Bug Fixes:
402
403* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
404  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
405
406* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
407  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
408
409* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
410
411* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
412
413* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
414
415* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
416  array. This will reduce memory usage.
417
418* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
419  systems.
420
421* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
422
423* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
424  being lost.
425
426* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
427  the case of non-adjacent merging.
428
429* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
430
431Other:
432
433* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
434  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
435  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
436
437
438Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
439----------------------------------
440
441New features:
442
443* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
444  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
445  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
446  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
447  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
448
449* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
450  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
451  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
452  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
453  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
454  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
455  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
456  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
457  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
458
459* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
460  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
461  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
462  flux units).
463
464Bug fixes:
465
466* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
467  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
468  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
469  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
470  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
471  difficulties you encounter!
472
473* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
474  efficient.
475
476* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
477  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
478  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
479
480* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
481  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
482
483* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
484  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
485  axes were defined).
486
487
488
489Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
490----------------------------------
491
492Bug fixes:
493* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
494  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
495  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
496  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
497
498* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
499  of 1/ln(2).
500
501* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
502  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
503  installation works even if there is no library file.
504
505New Features:
506* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
507  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
508  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
509  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
510  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
511  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
512
513* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
514  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
515  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
516  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
517
518* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
519  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
520  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
521  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
522  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
523  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
524  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
525  (the default) or "circles".
526
527* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
528  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
529  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
530  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
531
532Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
533----------------------------------
534
535Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
536development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
537but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
538couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
539relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
540
541* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
542  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
543  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
544  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
545  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
546
547* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
548  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
549  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
550  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
551  they are not calculated!).
552
553* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
554  the BUNIT determination.
555
556* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
557  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
558  but came up in parallelisation development).
559
560Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
561----------------------------------
562
563A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
564the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
565machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
566so that the compilation should work in all cases.
567
568Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
569directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
570in compilation.
571
572However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
573this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
574there is probably no reason to update.
575
576Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
577----------------------------------
578
579Compilation:
580
581* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
582  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
583  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
584
585* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
586  and it should now compile fine.
587
588* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
589
590
591Bugfixing:
592
593* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
594  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
595  together. This should no longer be the case.
596
597* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
598  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
599  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
600  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
601  scaling should be accurate.
602
603* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
604  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
605  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
606  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
607  calculated correctly.
608
609* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
610  of the merging code.
611
612New user parameters:
613
614* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
615  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
616  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
617
618* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
619  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
620  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
621  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
622  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
623  duchamp-Results.hdr).
624
625* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
626  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
627  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
628  absorption lines).
629
630* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
631  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
632  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
633  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
634  value is true.
635
636New Feature:
637
638* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
639  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
640  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
641  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
642  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
643
644* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
645  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
646
647
648Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
649------------------------------------
650
651Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
652
653* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
654  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
655  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
656  that the same value should appear on all machines.
657  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
658  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
659  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
660
661* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
662  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
663  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
664
665* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
666  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
667  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
668  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
669  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
670  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
671  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
672
673* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
674  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
675
676
677Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
678------------------------------------
679
680Changes made since the last numbered release:
681
682EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
683
684* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
685  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
686  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
687  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
688  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
689  way the list of detected objects is stored.
690
691SMOOTHING:
692
693* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
694  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
695  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
696  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
697  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
698  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
699  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
700  smoothing already in use.
701
702DETECTIONS:
703
704* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
705  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
706  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
707  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
708  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
709  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
710  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
711  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
712
713* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
714  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
715  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
716
717INPUTS:
718
719* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
720  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
721  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
722  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
723  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
724
725* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
726  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
727  cube.
728
729* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
730  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
731  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
732
733* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
734  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
735
736OUTPUTS:
737
738* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
739  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
740
741* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
742
743* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
744  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
745  falling off the edge of the page.
746
747* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
748  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
749  parameter file.
750
751* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
752  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
753  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
754
755BUGFIXES:
756
757* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
758  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
759  velocity axis setups now.
760
761* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
762  not closing.
763
764* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
765  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
766  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
767
768* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
769  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
770  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
771  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
772  determination if they are being flagged.
773
774
775
776Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
777----------------------------------
778
779One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
780
781* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
782  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
783  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
784  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
785  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
786  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
787
788* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
789  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
790
791* Several improvements have been made to the memory
792  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
793  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
794  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
795  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
796
797* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
798  (and a bit more robust).
799
800* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
801  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
802  may be expected from VLBI data).
803
804* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
805
806
807Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
808----------------------------------
809
810Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
811
812* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
813  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
814  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
815  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
816  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
817
818* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
819  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
820  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
821
822* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
823  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
824  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
825  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
826  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
827  become annoying.
828
829* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
830  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
831
832* A few minor bug fixes:
833  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
834    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
835  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
836    when it is read in from a file.
837
838* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
839  remove redundant arrays and variables.
840
841
842Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
843----------------------------------
844
845Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
846changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
847number of users, as well as a few extra features.
848
849Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
850
851USER INTERFACE:
852
853* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
854  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
855  true or 1 to give the same result).
856
857GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
858
859* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
860  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
861  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
862  default is true).
863  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
864  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
865  dividing line.
866
867* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
868  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
869  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
870  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
871  arcmin.)
872
873* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
874  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
875  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
876  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
877  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
878
879* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
880  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
881
882TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
883
884* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
885  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
886  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
887  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
888
889* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
890  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
891  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
892  presented above the spectral plots.
893
894* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
895  presentation of information is clearer.
896
897FITS I/O RELATED:
898
899* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
900  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
901  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
902  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
903  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
904  spectral axes).
905
906* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
907  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
908  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
909
910* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
911  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
912  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
913
914* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
915  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
916  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
917
918OTHER BUG-FIXING:
919
920* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
921  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
922  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
923  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
924  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
925  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
926
927* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
928  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
929
930* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
931  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
932
933* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
934  enter a beam size as a parameter.
935
936* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
937  robustness.
938
939
940Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
941--------------------------------
942
943The first full release version.
944
945Several major changes compared to previous version:
946
947* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
948  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
949  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
950  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
951  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
952  code (easier for me!).
953
954* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
955  just doing it in 3-D.
956
957* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
958  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
959  FITS header) are included in the output table.
960
961* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
962  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
963  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
964
965Other, more minor changes include:
966
967* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
968  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
969  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
970
971* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
972  length indicated.
973
974* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
975  was run.
976
977* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
978  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
979
980Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
981
982
983Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
984--------------------------------
985
986* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
987  location or negative enclosed flux.
988
989* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
990  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
991  a full parameter file.
992
993* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
994  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
995
996* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
997
998* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
999  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
1000
1001* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
1002  functions, rather than a system call.
1003
1004* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
1005  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
1006  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
1007  improved the formatting a little.
1008
1009* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
1010  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
1011  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
1012  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
1013  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
1014  the cube anew.
1015
1016* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
1017
1018
1019
1020Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
1021--------------------------------
1022
1023First public release version.
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