% ----------------------------------------------------------------------- % hints.tex: Section giving some tips & hints on how Duchamp is best % used. % ----------------------------------------------------------------------- % Copyright (C) 2006, Matthew Whiting, ATNF % % This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it % under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the % Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your % option) any later version. % % Duchamp is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT % ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or % FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License % for more details. % % You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License % along with Duchamp; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, % Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA % % Correspondence concerning Duchamp may be directed to: % Internet email: Matthew.Whiting [at] atnf.csiro.au % Postal address: Dr. Matthew Whiting % Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO % PO Box 76 % Epping NSW 1710 % AUSTRALIA % ----------------------------------------------------------------------- \secA{Notes and hints on the use of \duchamp} \label{sec-notes} In using \duchamp, the user has to make a number of decisions about the way the program runs. This section is designed to give the user some idea about what to choose. The main choice is whether to alter the cube to try and enhance the detectability of objects, by either smoothing or reconstructing via the \atrous method. The main benefits of both methods are the marked reduction in the noise level, leading to regularly-shaped detections, and good reliability for faint sources. The main drawback with the \atrous method is the long execution time: to reconstruct a $170\times160\times1024$ (\hipass) cube often requires three iterations and takes about 20-25 minutes to run completely. Note that this is for the more complete three-dimensional reconstruction: using \texttt{reconDim = 1} makes the reconstruction quicker (the full program then takes less than 5 minutes), but it is still the largest part of the time. The smoothing procedure is computationally simpler, and thus quicker, than the reconstruction. The spectral Hanning method adds only a very small overhead on the execution, and the spatial Gaussian method, while taking longer, will be done (for the above example) in less than 2 minutes. Note that these times will depend on the size of the filter/kernel used: a larger filter means more calculations. The searching part of the procedure is much quicker: searching an un-reconstructed cube leads to execution times of less than a minute. Alternatively, using the ability to read in previously-saved reconstructed arrays makes running the reconstruction more than once a more feasible prospect. On the positive side, the shape of the detections in a cube that has been reconstructed or smoothed will be much more regular and smooth -- the ragged edges that objects in the raw cube possess are smoothed by the removal of most of the noise. This enables better determination of the shapes and characteristics of objects. While the time overhead is larger for the reconstruction case, it will potentially provide a better recovery of real sources than the smoothing case. This is because it probes the full range of scales present in the cube (or spectral domain), rather than the specific scale determined by the Hanning filter or Gaussian kernel used in the smoothing. When considering the reconstruction method, note that the 2D reconstruction (\texttt{reconDim = 2}) can be susceptible to edge effects. If the valid area in the cube (\ie the part that is not BLANK) has non-rectangular edges, the convolution can produce artefacts in the reconstruction that mimic the edges and can lead (depending on the selection threshold) to some spurious sources. Caution is advised with such data -- the user is advised to check carefully the reconstructed cube for the presence of such artefacts. Note, however, that the 1- and 3-dimensional reconstructions are \emph{not} susceptible in the same way, since the spectral direction does not generally exhibit these BLANK edges, and so we recommend the use of either of these. If one chooses the reconstruction method, a further decision is required on the signal-to-noise cutoff used in determining acceptable wavelet coefficients. A larger value will remove more noise from the cube, at the expense of losing fainter sources, while a smaller value will include more noise, which may produce spurious detections, but will be more sensitive to faint sources. Values of less than about $3\sigma$ tend to not reduce the noise a great deal and can lead to many spurious sources (this depends, of course on the cube itself). The smoothing options have less parameters to consider: basically just the size of the smoothing function or kernel. Spectrally smoothing with a Hanning filter of width 3 (the smallest possible) is very efficient at removing spurious one-channel objects that may result just from statistical fluctuations of the noise. One may want to use larger widths or kernels of larger size to look for features of a particular scale in the cube. When it comes to searching, the FDR method produces more reliable results than simple sigma-clipping, particularly in the absence of reconstruction. However, it does not work in exactly the way one would expect for a given value of \texttt{alpha}. For instance, setting fairly liberal values of \texttt{alpha} (say, 0.1) will often lead to a much smaller fraction of false detections (\ie much less than 10\%). This is the effect of the merging algorithms, that combine the sources after the detection stage, and reject detections not meeting the minimum pixel or channel requirements. It is thus better to aim for larger \texttt{alpha} values than those derived from a straight conversion of the desired false detection rate. If the FDR method is not used, caution is required when choosing the S/N cutoff. Typical cubes have very large numbers of pixels, so even an apparently large cutoff will still result in a not-insignificant number of detections simply due to random fluctuations of the noise background. For instance, a $4\sigma$ threshold on a cube of Gaussian noise of size $100\times100\times1024$ will result in $\sim340$ detections. This is where the minimum channel and pixel requirements are important in rejecting spurious detections. Finally, as \duchamp is still undergoing development, there are some elements that are not fully developed. In particular, it is not as clever as I would like at avoiding interference. The ability to place requirements on the minimum number of channels and pixels partially circumvents this problem, but work is being done to make \duchamp smarter at rejecting signals that are clearly (to a human eye at least) interference. See the following section for further improvements that are planned.