source: tags/release-1.1.10/CHANGES @ 1391

Last change on this file since 1391 was 766, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 14 years ago

Updates to documentation and CHANGES file. (Version number plus a couple of minor additions to doc)

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