source: trunk/CHANGES @ 836

Last change on this file since 836 was 836, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 13 years ago

Moving version number to 1.1.12 in preparation for new release. Also updating CHANGES file.

File size: 39.6 KB
Line 
1Duchamp version 1.1.12 (2011/03/18)
2-------------------------------------
3
4Bug fixes:
5
6* The velocity width calculations had a bug that occasionally led to
7  very large values. The widths are calculated using the integrated
8  spectrum, using a threshold relative to its peak. In v.1.1.10 and
9  1.1.11, however, the peak was searched for over the entire spectral
10  range, rather than just the range for the current object. This led
11  to spurious values. This has been fixed, so that the peak is only
12  searched for within the detected ranage of the object.
13
14* Both the pixel and statistics subsections are now more carefully
15  examined, with errors reported if there are no valid pixels in the
16  pixel subsection, or if the statistics subsection does not intersect
17  with the pixel subsection.
18
19Other:
20
21* The configure script has been slightly improved so that the pgsbox
22  library is only added if PGPlot has been enabled - this is
23  particularly necessary with the slightly changed build procedure for
24  recent wcslib versions.
25
26* In a related note, one file - momentMap.cc - had some #include
27  statements that failed when PGPlot (and hence pgsbox in WCSLIB) was
28  not enabled. These were actually unnecesssary and have been removed.
29
30* There is a new input parameter - flagPlotSpectra - that allows the
31  user to turn off the production of the spectral plots. It defaults
32  to true (meaning the plots are produced).
33
34
35Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/03/01)
36-------------------------------------
37
38Improvements:
39
40* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
41  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
42  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
43  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
44
45* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
46  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
47  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
48  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
49  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
50
51* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
52  more information.
53
54Bug Fixes:
55
56* The statistics section (statSec) could be larger than the image
57  subsection (if provided), yet the pixels required would never be
58  read in from the FITS file. The behaviour has been changed so that
59  the statSec, if requested, is trimmed to be wholly within the image
60  section.
61
62* It was possible to request, for instance, spectral smoothing on a 2D
63  image. This resulted in a blank smoothed array, which led to
64  problems in the calculations of statistics (and hence the
65  threshold), as well as subsequent calculations. This has been fixed,
66  so that in cases like this the smoothing is turned off (and a
67  warning message is displayed).
68
69* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
70  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
71  fixed.
72
73* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
74  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
75
76* Writing text spectra would only occur when PGPlot output was enabled
77  in the build (it was combined with the plotting of the spectral
78  graphs). This has been changed so that this output can be requested
79  without requiring PGPlot.
80
81* The equation for the beam size in Sec.4.2 of the User Guide was
82  incorrect and has been fixed.
83
84* Minor change to the configure script to improve the detection of the
85  PGPlot library.
86
87Code development notes:
88
89* The main work has been additions and improvements to the interfaces
90  for the Param and the Section classes, as well as new classes to
91  manage the beam information. The efficiency changes mentioned above
92  also affected the internals of some of the PixelInfo classes, and
93  provided additional functions for judging the closeness of
94  neighbouring objects.
95
96Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
97-------------------------------------
98
99Improvements:
100
101* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
102  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
103  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
104  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
105  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
106  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
107  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
108  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
109  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
110  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
111  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
112  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
113
114* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
115  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
116  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
117  minor changes as well.
118
119* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
120  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
121  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
122
123* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
124  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
125  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
126  with running out of memory.
127
128* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
129
130* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
131  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
132  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
133  the plot.
134
135* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
136  functional change was made).
137
138Bug fixes:
139
140* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
141  fixed.
142
143* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
144  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
145  string). This has been fixed.
146
147* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
148  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
149  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
150
151* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
152  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
153  now work as expected.
154
155* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
156  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
157
158* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
159  covered by the verbose flag.
160
161* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
162
163* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
164  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
165
166Code development notes:
167
168* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
169  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
170  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
171  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
172  for finding the velocity widths.
173
174Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
175-------------------------------------
176
177Improvements:
178
179* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
180  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
181  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
182
183* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
184  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
185  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
186  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
187  suggesting this and the above improvement.
188
189* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
190  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
191  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
192  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
193  up all close matches.
194
195* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
196  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
197  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
198  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
199  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
200  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
201  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
202
203* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
204  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
205  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
206  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
207  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
208  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
209
210* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
211  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
212  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
213  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
214
215* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
216  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
217
218* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
219  functionality.
220
221Bug fixes:
222
223* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
224  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
225  large). This has been fixed.
226
227* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
228  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
229  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
230  noticeable depending on the dataset.
231
232* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
233  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
234  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
235
236* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
237  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
238  made more robust.
239
240* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
241  errors, which have been fixed.
242
243* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
244  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
245  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
246  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
247  rectified.
248
249* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
250
251
252Code development notes:
253
254  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
255  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
256  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
257  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
258
259* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
260  robust from a programming point of view.
261
262* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
263  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
264  work.
265
266* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
267  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
268  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
269  cleanly.
270
271* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
272  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
273  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
274  with them appropriately.
275
276
277Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
278----------------------------------
279
280Improvements:
281
282* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
283  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
284  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
285  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
286  the default behaviour stays the same.
287
288* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
289  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
290  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
291  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
292  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
293  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
294
295* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
296  the cube statistics are printed.
297
298
299Bug fixes:
300
301* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
302  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
303
304* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
305  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
306  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
307
308* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
309  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
310  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
311  coordinates. This has been fixed.
312
313* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
314  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
315  fine.
316
317* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
318  properly. This has been remedied.
319
320* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
321  flux units. This has been fixed.
322
323* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
324
325* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
326  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
327
328* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
329  again causing some compilers to fail.
330
331
332Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
333----------------------------------
334
335Improvements:
336
337* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
338  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
339  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
340  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
341  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
342
343* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
344  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
345  that Duchamp provides.
346
347* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
348  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
349  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
350  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
351
352* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
353  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
354  file has something in it.
355
356* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
357  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
358  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
359  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
360
361* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
362  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
363  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
364  around at a later date.
365
366Bug Fixes:
367
368* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
369  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
370
371* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
372  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
373
374* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
375
376* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
377
378* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
379
380* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
381  array. This will reduce memory usage.
382
383* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
384  systems.
385
386* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
387
388* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
389  being lost.
390
391* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
392  the case of non-adjacent merging.
393
394* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
395
396Other:
397
398* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
399  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
400  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
401
402
403Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
404----------------------------------
405
406New features:
407
408* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
409  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
410  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
411  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
412  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
413
414* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
415  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
416  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
417  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
418  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
419  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
420  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
421  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
422  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
423
424* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
425  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
426  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
427  flux units).
428
429Bug fixes:
430
431* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
432  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
433  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
434  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
435  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
436  difficulties you encounter!
437
438* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
439  efficient.
440
441* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
442  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
443  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
444
445* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
446  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
447
448* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
449  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
450  axes were defined).
451
452
453
454Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
455----------------------------------
456
457Bug fixes:
458* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
459  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
460  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
461  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
462
463* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
464  of 1/ln(2).
465
466* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
467  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
468  installation works even if there is no library file.
469
470New Features:
471* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
472  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
473  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
474  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
475  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
476  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
477
478* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
479  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
480  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
481  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
482
483* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
484  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
485  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
486  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
487  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
488  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
489  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
490  (the default) or "circles".
491
492* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
493  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
494  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
495  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
496
497Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
498----------------------------------
499
500Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
501development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
502but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
503couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
504relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
505
506* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
507  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
508  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
509  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
510  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
511
512* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
513  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
514  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
515  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
516  they are not calculated!).
517
518* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
519  the BUNIT determination.
520
521* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
522  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
523  but came up in parallelisation development).
524
525Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
526----------------------------------
527
528A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
529the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
530machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
531so that the compilation should work in all cases.
532
533Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
534directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
535in compilation.
536
537However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
538this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
539there is probably no reason to update.
540
541Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
542----------------------------------
543
544Compilation:
545
546* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
547  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
548  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
549
550* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
551  and it should now compile fine.
552
553* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
554
555
556Bugfixing:
557
558* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
559  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
560  together. This should no longer be the case.
561
562* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
563  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
564  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
565  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
566  scaling should be accurate.
567
568* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
569  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
570  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
571  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
572  calculated correctly.
573
574* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
575  of the merging code.
576
577New user parameters:
578
579* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
580  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
581  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
582
583* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
584  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
585  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
586  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
587  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
588  duchamp-Results.hdr).
589
590* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
591  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
592  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
593  absorption lines).
594
595* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
596  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
597  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
598  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
599  value is true.
600
601New Feature:
602
603* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
604  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
605  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
606  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
607  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
608
609* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
610  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
611
612
613Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
614------------------------------------
615
616Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
617
618* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
619  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
620  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
621  that the same value should appear on all machines.
622  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
623  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
624  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
625
626* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
627  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
628  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
629
630* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
631  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
632  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
633  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
634  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
635  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
636  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
637
638* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
639  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
640
641
642Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
643------------------------------------
644
645Changes made since the last numbered release:
646
647EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
648
649* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
650  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
651  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
652  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
653  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
654  way the list of detected objects is stored.
655
656SMOOTHING:
657
658* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
659  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
660  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
661  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
662  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
663  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
664  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
665  smoothing already in use.
666
667DETECTIONS:
668
669* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
670  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
671  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
672  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
673  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
674  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
675  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
676  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
677
678* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
679  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
680  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
681
682INPUTS:
683
684* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
685  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
686  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
687  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
688  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
689
690* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
691  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
692  cube.
693
694* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
695  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
696  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
697
698* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
699  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
700
701OUTPUTS:
702
703* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
704  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
705
706* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
707
708* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
709  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
710  falling off the edge of the page.
711
712* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
713  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
714  parameter file.
715
716* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
717  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
718  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
719
720BUGFIXES:
721
722* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
723  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
724  velocity axis setups now.
725
726* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
727  not closing.
728
729* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
730  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
731  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
732
733* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
734  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
735  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
736  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
737  determination if they are being flagged.
738
739
740
741Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
742----------------------------------
743
744One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
745
746* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
747  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
748  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
749  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
750  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
751  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
752
753* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
754  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
755
756* Several improvements have been made to the memory
757  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
758  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
759  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
760  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
761
762* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
763  (and a bit more robust).
764
765* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
766  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
767  may be expected from VLBI data).
768
769* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
770
771
772Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
773----------------------------------
774
775Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
776
777* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
778  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
779  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
780  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
781  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
782
783* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
784  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
785  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
786
787* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
788  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
789  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
790  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
791  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
792  become annoying.
793
794* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
795  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
796
797* A few minor bug fixes:
798  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
799    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
800  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
801    when it is read in from a file.
802
803* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
804  remove redundant arrays and variables.
805
806
807Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
808----------------------------------
809
810Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
811changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
812number of users, as well as a few extra features.
813
814Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
815
816USER INTERFACE:
817
818* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
819  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
820  true or 1 to give the same result).
821
822GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
823
824* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
825  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
826  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
827  default is true).
828  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
829  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
830  dividing line.
831
832* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
833  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
834  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
835  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
836  arcmin.)
837
838* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
839  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
840  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
841  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
842  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
843
844* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
845  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
846
847TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
848
849* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
850  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
851  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
852  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
853
854* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
855  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
856  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
857  presented above the spectral plots.
858
859* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
860  presentation of information is clearer.
861
862FITS I/O RELATED:
863
864* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
865  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
866  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
867  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
868  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
869  spectral axes).
870
871* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
872  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
873  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
874
875* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
876  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
877  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
878
879* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
880  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
881  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
882
883OTHER BUG-FIXING:
884
885* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
886  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
887  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
888  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
889  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
890  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
891
892* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
893  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
894
895* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
896  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
897
898* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
899  enter a beam size as a parameter.
900
901* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
902  robustness.
903
904
905Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
906--------------------------------
907
908The first full release version.
909
910Several major changes compared to previous version:
911
912* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
913  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
914  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
915  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
916  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
917  code (easier for me!).
918
919* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
920  just doing it in 3-D.
921
922* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
923  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
924  FITS header) are included in the output table.
925
926* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
927  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
928  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
929
930Other, more minor changes include:
931
932* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
933  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
934  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
935
936* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
937  length indicated.
938
939* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
940  was run.
941
942* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
943  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
944
945Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
946
947
948Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
949--------------------------------
950
951* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
952  location or negative enclosed flux.
953
954* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
955  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
956  a full parameter file.
957
958* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
959  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
960
961* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
962
963* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
964  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
965
966* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
967  functions, rather than a system call.
968
969* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
970  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
971  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
972  improved the formatting a little.
973
974* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
975  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
976  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
977  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
978  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
979  the cube anew.
980
981* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
982
983
984
985Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
986--------------------------------
987
988First public release version.
Note: See TracBrowser for help on using the repository browser.