source: trunk/CHANGES @ 1362

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1Duchamp version 1.6 (2014/04/24)
2--------------------------------
3
4Improvements and bug fixes:
5
6* When searching for negative features while using baseline
7  subtraction, the parameterisation of the resulting detections was
8  not being done correctly. Duchamp now correctly identifies the peak
9  absorption location and measures the peak as being the peak
10  absorption from the fitted continuum level. A future release will
11  add more absorption-line-oriented parameters.
12
13* The way the borders of detections are displayed in annotation files
14  has been improved. Duchamp now writes them in a polygon or
15  join-the-dots fashion. This reduces the size of the annotation
16  files, and is now compatible with the CASA viewer.
17
18* The VOTables now refer to version 1.3 of the VOTable schema. Note
19  that they still use the old COOSYS method of specifying the
20  coordinates. Moving to the preferred STC method will happen in a
21  future release.
22
23* There were some problems with the storage and recovery of parameters
24  in the binary catalogue - these have been fixed.
25
26* The BITPIX keyword in the mask FITS files that Duchamp writes are
27  now SHORT_IMG, although they can be bigger if warranted by the
28  number of objects.
29
30* Some UCDs in the VOTable were missing semicolons between elements.
31
32Documentation improvmements
33
34* The InputComplete file is more up-to-date, and has information on
35  the type and default values of each possible input parameter (this
36  information is also reflected in the User Guide). This is in
37  preparation for a parameter editing GUI that will be released in a
38  forthcoming version.
39
40* The User's Guide now has a section on common installation issues,
41  based on feedback and experience with new users.
42
43Build changes:
44
45* Duchamp is now linked with the C++ compiler. Accordingly, the
46  configure script searches for libgfortran when the gfortran compiler
47  is specified (ie. has been used to build pgplot).
48
49* To allow Duchamp to build on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), configure
50  searches for the libc++ library as well as stdc++. Duchamp has been
51  successfully built on 10.9, with fresh installs of pgplot (5.2),
52  wcslib (4.20) and cfitsio (3.36), but, as always, your mileage may
53  vary. Please contact me via the Trac tickets if you encounter
54  problems.
55
56* A number of warnings that came to light with the change to XCode
57  XXXXX on the Mac have been fixed, and to gcc-4.4.5 on debian.
58
59
60Code base changes:
61
62* There are new wcs-pix conversion functions in fitsHeader that allow
63  the specification of a single set of pixel and world coordinates
64  (rather than arrays).
65
66* There is cleaner separation of the writing functions in the
67  VOTableCatalogueWriter class.
68
69* The management of the wavelet filters has been improved, with new
70  classes to handle the different filter types. The interface is
71  largely the same, however.
72
73* There are improved front-end functions for the writing of arrays to
74  the various FITS files.
75
76Duchamp version 1.5 (2013/08/29)
77--------------------------------
78
79New features & algorithms:
80
81* There is now a more flexible way to specify channels that should be
82  ignored by the source-finding. Use flaggedChannels to provide a list
83  of single channels or channel ranges that should be ignored. This
84  replaces the flagMW/minMW/maxMW parameters, extending their
85  functionality and allowing more than one set of channels to be
86  specified.
87
88* There is now an alternative way to find (and remove) spectral
89  baselines, using a median baselining algorithm. This calculates the
90  baseline value for a given pixel to be the median value within a box
91  of a specified size centred on that pixel. There are two input
92  parameters now available, baselineType (atrous or median), and
93  baselineBoxWidth (the width of the median box). Consult the User's
94  Guide for further information.
95
96* There is now more flexibility in running the spatial smoothing. The
97  cutoff value in determining the size of the smoothing kernel can now
98  be set via the input parameters, as can the way the edge pixels get
99  treated. Conult the User's Guide for details.
100
101* You can now also specify the maximum number of voxels, spatial
102  pixels and/or channels, in a way analogous to the minimum
103  values. Detections with more than the maximum are rejected. Negative
104  values (such as the defaults) mean this comparison is not done.
105
106Output changes:
107
108* The results files now include the Nchan and Nspatpix columns,
109  showing the number of distinct channels and the number of spatial
110  pixels in each detection. For clarity, the Npix column has been
111  renamed Nvoxel.
112
113* The VOTable now includes the pixel location X, Y, Z columns, and the
114  pixel ranges - this makes it much closer to the ASCII results file
115  (it is just missing the string versions of RA/DEC, and F_tot when
116  F_int is calculated).
117
118Bug fixes:
119
120* Negative velocity (and other) values were resulting in the column
121  widths not adjusting correctly, leading to columns running into each
122  other. This has been fixed, so that the spacing in the results files
123  should be correct.
124
125* Fixed a problem applicable to cubes with blank/masked pixels in the
126  same spectra as detections. The velocity width calculations could
127  sometimes fail due to the mask not being applied.
128
129Code changes:
130
131* The plotting code has been refactored, improving its class structure
132  and inheritance. No functional change from this should be evident,
133  but it improves the maintainability of the code.
134
135
136Duchamp version 1.4 (2013/06/20)
137--------------------------------
138
139Installation:
140
141* The "make lib" command will now create a shared library
142  libduchamp.1.4.so as well as the static library libduchamp.1.4.a
143  (formerly just called libduchamp.a).
144
145Bug Fixes:
146
147* The orientation of ellipses in the DS9 region files are now correct
148  (they were wrong by 90 degrees).
149
150* Corrected the output FITS filenames so that they work when the input
151  filename does *not* end in ".fits".
152
153Code changes:
154
155* The code that manages the output columns for the ASCII and VOTable
156  output has been overhauled and streamlined. Little functional change
157  should be evident, but it should be much more robust. And easier to
158  use in derived software.
159
160Duchamp version 1.3.2 (2013/05/02)
161----------------------------------
162
163Bug fixes:
164
165* The units for the integrated flux (for F_int) were not being
166  calculated for cases of a FITS file without a spectral
167  axis. Additionally, a vestigial default value meant this column had
168  units of "counts". This has been fixed so that a FITS file with
169  Jy/beam units will have F_int values in Jy.
170
171* The ellipse fitting to find the MAJ/MIN/PA was not working correctly
172  in the case of negative searches. This has been fixed.
173
174* The scaling of MAJ/MIN values was not being done correctly in all
175  cases, so that the values were out by a factor of 60 or 3600. This
176  was particularly the case when the ellipse fitting failed (due to
177  small numbers of pixels, for instance).
178
179* The principle axes calculations have been simplified slightly, and
180  now are done only on pixels above half the peak in the moment-0 map
181  (to estimate the FWHM).
182
183Duchamp version 1.3.1 (2013/04/18)
184----------------------------------
185
186Bug fixes:
187
188* The kernel used in the 2D smoothing was not normalised properly,
189  which meant the fluxes in the smoothed array were scaled
190  incorrectly. The kernel is now normalised, so that the fluxes in the
191  smoothed array decrease (and to an increasing degree with larger
192  kernels, as expected).
193
194* The way the position angle of the smoothing kernel was interpreted
195  was wrong. It now conforms to the typical astronomical position
196  angle definition of degrees east of north.
197
198* The Z_PEAK column was being left out of the results file for
199  Duchamp-1.3. It has been put back in.
200
201* The calculation of S/Nmax has changed so that when smoothing or
202  reconstruction is done, the peak flux used is measured in the
203  reconstructed/smoothed array (where the noise is measured).
204
205* The flux errors are now not reported in the case of smoothing, since
206  we don't measure the noise in the original input image array.
207
208Other fixes:
209
210* The vertical range of the spectral plots now properly takes into
211  account all spectra (not just the input array), and quirks with a MW
212  range lying outside the plotted range have been fixed.
213
214* The flux scaling for the moment-0 map plot now ignores negative
215  values, meaning the scale should be sensible.
216
217* The spelling of the Object2D::getPrincipalAxes() has been corrected.
218
219* Minor code optimisations have been made to the smoothing code.
220
221* The subsection class is now initialised with a blank string.
222
223Duchamp version 1.3 (2013/03/08)
224--------------------------------
225
226New features:
227
228* New source parameters:
229
230  # Each source now has a measurement of the major & minor axis sizes,
231    along with the position angle of the major axis. The sizes are the
232    full-width at half maximum, measured from the moment-0 map. These
233    now appear in the catalogue and in the spectral plots, with the
234    ellipse drawn on the moment map cutout in the spectral plots. The
235    old measurements of w_RA & w_DEC are still made and included in
236    the full catalogue, but are no longer reported in the smaller
237    catalogue printed to screen (nor in the XML/VOTable output).
238
239  # Each source also now has a measurement of the error on the
240    integrated and total fluxes. This is calculated from summing in
241    quadrature the statistical noise on each detected voxel. This is
242    from a request by Sara Shakouri.
243
244* Output files - new types and changes to the way they are written:
245
246  # Ability to create CASA region format files showing the location of
247    the detected sources. This is analogous to the Karma annotation
248    files or DS9 region files, for use with the casa viewer, but can
249    also be imported into casapy.
250
251  # Ability to save baseline values to a FITS file (in the same way as
252    for the reconstructed or smoothed array).
253
254  # Ability to save the moment-0 mask to a FITS file (that is, a mask
255    indicating which spatial pixels form part of the moment-0 map).
256
257  # There is an improved way to store the detected pixels for later
258    re-use. While previously the detected pixels were written as scans
259    to the logfile, and then read in when the usePrevious flag was
260    set, we now write the scans and other metadata to a binary
261    catalogue that can be read in again. Writing as a binary file
262    leads to much better compression of the data, particularly when
263    combined with the run-length encoding. It is anticipated future
264    tools will be provided to allow additional interaction with these
265    binary catalogues.
266
267  # There are slight changes to the format of the ASCII catalogues,
268    where lines not containing sources are prefixed with a comment
269    character '#'. This will facilitate their use in other software.
270
271* There is a new command-line parameter, -t THRESH, which specifies
272  the flux threshold for searching. It is designed to be used with the
273  -f option, as a quick way of searching a FITS image to a specified
274  flux level.
275
276Bug fixes:
277
278* A bug in the spatial smoothing has been fixed. The mask was being
279  interpreted incorrectly, so that no valid pixels were getting
280  smoothed.
281
282* The WCS for the moment-0 FITS cube has been fixed (specifically, the
283  axis names).
284
285* When usePrevious was used, the behaviour in previous versions was to
286  always write individual spectra. This is now controlled by a new
287  parameter flagPlotIndividualSpectra.
288
289* Minor improvements to the output when verbose=false.
290
291* Improvements to the Makefile, so that header files from a
292  previously-installed version of Duchamp do not get used instead of
293  those from the current version.
294
295* The vertical range for the spectral plots now take into account the
296  baseline and reconstructed/smoothed arrays as well (outside of any
297  MW range, of course).
298
299Other
300
301* The code-base for reading from and writing to FITS files has been
302  overhauled and streamlined. It can now be found in the FitsIO
303  directory. The interface for the writing of FITS files via the Cube
304  class has not changed.
305
306* The User Guide has been slightly re-ordered to provide more explicit
307  information about the source parameters.
308
309
310Duchamp version 1.2.2 (2012/10/29)
311----------------------------------
312
313Bug fixes:
314
315* The reading of reconstructed & smoothed arrays in the case of large
316  (>2GB) cubes has been improved. While the most recent versions of
317  cfitsio were able to handle these, earlier versions would result in
318  a segementation fault using the previous interface. An alternative
319  interface has been implemented that avoids these faults, even for
320  the older cfitsio libraries.
321
322* A bug affecting the writing of FITS mask files (apparently for the
323  case of flagging by the object number) has been fixed.
324
325* The moment map occasionally failed if sources lay spatially within
326  the blank pixel region of the first channel. This check has been
327  removed and the moment map should be produced successfully in all
328  situations.
329
330Other:
331
332* The UCDs used in the VOTable catalogue output have been
333  updated. Several of these were shared between different columns, and
334  so they have been changed so that each UCD is unique to one
335  column. The column ID strings have been updated for clarity.
336
337* The determination of default output image filenames has been
338  improved -- it previously assumed the input filename ended in
339  '.fits', but this is no longer the case.
340
341Duchamp version 1.2.1 (2012/10/09)
342----------------------------------
343
344New feature:
345
346* Duchamp can now produce region files to annotate images displayed in
347  SAOImage DS9. There are new parameters flagDS9 and ds9File that work
348  in the same way as the Karma annotation file parameters. The region
349  files can also be displayed in (at least some versions of)
350  casaviewer.
351
352* There is a new script to fix occasional problems with the
353  automatically-detected Makefile, and the verification script has
354  been updated and improved.
355
356Bug fixes:
357
358* The main bug fix for this release corrects a problem with the
359  velocity width measurements made when searching for negative
360  detections. It was possible to get very small (and incorrect) widths
361  in some cases - this was due to the integrated spectrum not being
362  inverted correctly.
363
364* In the case of smoothing, the stats of the full cube that were being
365  reported in the output files were actually those of the un-smoothed
366  (input cube). This only affected the output files, not the detection
367  process itself.
368
369* The units were not being reported in the VOTable. This has been
370  fixed.
371
372* The UCDs for the spectral parameters in the VOTable were not being
373  adapted to the user requests, so didn't always match the types of
374  the parameters. All should be consistent now.
375
376Other changes:
377
378* The codebase relating to the creation of and writing to output files
379  (results, logs, annotation, VOTables) has been overhauled, with a
380  cleaner interface. Most of this code is in the new subdirectory
381  src/Outputs, to where the columns code has been moved as well.
382
383  This was instigated by ASKAP/Selavy development, but also allowed
384  the expansion of output formats to include DS9 region files. No
385  change to the user should be visible, but anyone using the software
386  will notice differences. Please get in touch if changes are
387  difficult to follow.
388
389Duchamp version 1.2 (2012/08/08)
390--------------------------------
391
392Key changes:
393
394* The way the wavelet reconstruction is done in the presence of BLANK
395  voxels is slightly different, specifically when there were BLANK
396  voxels on the edge. While BLANK voxels are always ignored by the
397  reconstruction (and left in place), the previous approach dealt with
398  BLANKS on the edge by moving the effective edge of the image inwards
399  until the first non-blank voxel. This meant that the size of the
400  dimensions used to determine the number of scales, and the location
401  where boundary reflections took place where different to the input
402  image size.
403
404  However, this meant that BLANK voxels on the edge were treated
405  differently to those not on the edge, so this inconsistency was
406  removed. The full image dimensions are always used to calculate the
407  number of scales, and reflections (which is how the reconstruction
408  deals with the boundaries) will occur at the actual image edges.
409
410  If your data has this property (BLANK pixels at the image
411  boundaries), then any reconstruction will be affected (most likely
412  only in a small way) and potentially any subsequent searching. You
413  are advised to check this (for instance by saving the results of the
414  resonstruction from 1.1.13 and 1.2 and comparing).
415
416* The way the spectral world coordinate system is dealt with has been
417  improved. Previously Duchamp tried to convert to a velocity axis,
418  and got a bit grumpy if that didn't work well. Now it will express
419  the spectral units in the axis type indicated by the FITS
420  header. Duchamp will also allow you to change this type by providing
421  an appropriate WCS type as an input parameter. You may also provide
422  a rest frequency in the parameter file and this will be used to
423  calculate velocities. And, as before, you can provide specific units
424  for the spectral quantities to be converted into.
425
426* Since v1.1.13 was released, the journal paper describing Duchamp has
427  been published. It can be found at MNRAS 421, 3242 (2012), or
428  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.20548.x/full. It
429  includes descriptions of the various algorithms used for Duchamp, as
430  well as some indicative comparisons of the relative completeness &
431  reliability. Please cite this paper when describing Duchamp.
432
433Other new features:
434
435* The default value of snrCut has changed from 3 to 5. This is
436  espeically important if you use the -f option, but also if you don't
437  provide snrCut in your parameter file.
438
439* The XML VOTable output now includes a more complete list of
440  parameters, matching the output given in text form in the results &
441  log output files. Only those parameters affecting the results are
442  included - things like the output file names and so on are left out.
443
444* The minVoxels parameter is now adjusted to be at least (minPix +
445  minChannels - 1). If it is changed, a warning message is triggered.
446
447* The warning/error reporting has been overhauled, with an improved
448  interface for developers. Also, some ERROR instances that previously
449  resulted in the program terminating now allow it to continue
450  (provided that is possible given the error).
451
452* It is now possible to give the convergence criterion for the wavelet
453  reconstruction via the parameter reconConvergence. When the relative
454  change in standard deviation of the residuals from the
455  reconstruction falls below this value, the a trous algorithm stops
456  iterating.
457
458* The way one-dimensional arrays were dealt with was unsatisfactory,
459  both with the way positions were registered and the format of the
460  graphical output. Improvements have been made such that a 1D data
461  structure is assumed to be a spectrum, and so positions in the
462  spectrum are reported as z-pixels (or the equivalent world
463  coordinate). Instead of a 2D moment map, the X-windows display will
464  show the spectrum with all detected pixels plus the final list of
465  detections highlighted, along with the detection and growth
466  thresholds. This plot will also be written to the "detectionMap"
467  image.
468
469* All spectral plots will now show the detection (and growth, if
470  applicable) thresholds when plotting the peak flux spectrum.
471
472* Accessing FITS files when a subsection string is provided has been
473  streamlined. The cfitsio package, which handles the FITS access,
474  creates a temporary file containing this image section, and this
475  meant the previous approach was slow, particularly for large
476  files/sections. Now the file is only opened once and the overhead of
477  creating the temporary file is only encountered once.
478
479* Several aspects of the processing & output did not handle a
480  non-existent WCS well. This has been improved, so that all stages of
481  execution will proceed without errors.
482
483Bug fixes:
484
485* The absence of a BLANK keyword when trimming will now not trigger a
486  failure, only a warning message.
487
488* The flux unit conversion (eg. from Jy/beam to mJy/beam) was not
489  being applied correctly when an existing reconstructed or smoothed
490  array was being read in. This is now applied properly.
491
492* When saving reconstructed or smoothed arrays, the data type is now
493  set to FLOAT, so that the correct values are written (and
494  subsequently read in). The previous version was potentially saving
495  to a FITS file with integer data type (this depended on the type of
496  the input array). In this case, the full precision of data values
497  would not be preserved, so reading back in and doing an identical
498  search could yield different sources.
499
500* For certain cases, the reconstruction attempted to use a very large
501  number of scales. This has been fixed.
502
503* The maximum scale for the reconstruction was not always being
504  applied. The scale ranges are now enforced for all types of
505  reconstructions.
506
507* When saving a mask image while using a subsection of a cube, the
508  offsets for the subsection were not being accounted for
509  correctly. This is now fixed.
510
511* The detection map plots were not recording pixels added from the
512  growing stage. This has been fixed.
513
514* The RA & Dec now have appropriate precision, rather than an
515  arbitrary 2 decimal places on the seconds value. The RA will be one
516  decimal place more than the Dec, and they will reflect the degree of
517  precision in the image pixels.
518
519* A number of data type conversions (typically ints to floats) led to
520  errors in some calculations, such as WCS conversions. Care has been
521  taken to make sure all indexing is done appropriately with no
522  overflow, and that all conversions (where necessary) are done
523  appropriately.
524
525* It was possible to get world positions looking like 11:59:60.0! Not
526  any more.
527
528* Reading previous detections from the log file (via the use of the
529  usePrevious parameter) did result in error messages due to slightly
530  incompatible formats. These have been fixed, and all graphical
531  output should work properly.
532
533* When using a spectral search, having a blank pixel in the first
534  channel could lead to that entire spectrum being ignored, leading to
535  inconsistent results between spectral and spatial searches. This
536  issue has been fixed, with both types of searches returning the same
537  catalogue.
538
539
540Code base development notes:
541
542* Most instances of integer overflow due to insufficient precision
543  have been tracked down - many of these were indexing variables of
544  type int, which have been changed to size_t.
545
546* Importantly, for code interfacing with the duchamp::Cube and related
547  classes, axisDim is now an array of size_t elements, rather than
548  long.
549
550* Object3D now carries its spatial map with it, rather than
551  calculating it on the fly when requested. This saves a lot of
552  unnecessary computational effort.
553
554* The warning/error interface has improved, making use of C++
555  exception handling. This should be compatible with external logging
556  infrastructure (such as log4cxx).
557
558* The interface to the FitsHeader & WCS structures for external code
559  has been improved, so that the WCS can be set up via function calls.
560
561
562
563Duchamp version 1.1.13 (2011/04/10)
564-------------------------------------
565
566Bug fixes:
567
568* The median statistics calculations had a bug in the test for whether
569  the array under consideration was of even size. The correction for
570  this can mean small differences in the resulting values. This can
571  flow through to calculated detection thresholds - please check this
572  with your data if you use this mode!
573
574* The reconstruction code had a bug where the incorrect number of
575  scales was being used. This occurred when the blank pixel flag was
576  set, and when the spectral dimension was smaller than both the
577  spatial dimensions.
578
579Other:
580
581* The default value of the blank pixel flag has been set to false,
582  rather than true. For Duchamp, this should not matter, as it is set
583  when the FITS file is read in. For external code using, for
584  instance, the reconstruction algorithms, this default may be
585  important. Having it true was contributing to the second bug listed
586  above. It also makes more sense for it to be false unless explicitly
587  set in some way.
588
589* The reconstruction code has been streamlined a little, reducing its
590  memory impact and using more appropriate variable types
591  (eg. unsigned ints instead of ints and so forth).
592
593* For those who care about the actual code base, the statistics
594  functions have been expanded, and separated from getStats.cc into
595  "normal" and "robust" versions.
596
597
598Duchamp version 1.1.12 (2011/03/18)
599-------------------------------------
600
601Bug fixes:
602
603* The velocity width calculations had a bug that occasionally led to
604  very large values. The widths are calculated using the integrated
605  spectrum, using a threshold relative to its peak. In v.1.1.10 and
606  1.1.11, however, the peak was searched for over the entire spectral
607  range, rather than just the range for the current object. This led
608  to spurious values. This has been fixed, so that the peak is only
609  searched for within the detected ranage of the object.
610
611* Both the pixel and statistics subsections are now more carefully
612  examined, with errors reported if there are no valid pixels in the
613  pixel subsection, or if the statistics subsection does not intersect
614  with the pixel subsection.
615
616Other:
617
618* The configure script has been slightly improved so that the pgsbox
619  library is only added if PGPlot has been enabled - this is
620  particularly necessary with the slightly changed build procedure for
621  recent wcslib versions.
622
623* In a related note, one file - momentMap.cc - had some #include
624  statements that failed when PGPlot (and hence pgsbox in WCSLIB) was
625  not enabled. These were actually unnecesssary and have been removed.
626
627* There is a new input parameter - flagPlotSpectra - that allows the
628  user to turn off the production of the spectral plots. It defaults
629  to true (meaning the plots are produced).
630
631
632Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/03/01)
633-------------------------------------
634
635Improvements:
636
637* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
638  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
639  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
640  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
641
642* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
643  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
644  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
645  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
646  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
647
648* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
649  more information.
650
651Bug Fixes:
652
653* The statistics section (statSec) could be larger than the image
654  subsection (if provided), yet the pixels required would never be
655  read in from the FITS file. The behaviour has been changed so that
656  the statSec, if requested, is trimmed to be wholly within the image
657  section.
658
659* It was possible to request, for instance, spectral smoothing on a 2D
660  image. This resulted in a blank smoothed array, which led to
661  problems in the calculations of statistics (and hence the
662  threshold), as well as subsequent calculations. This has been fixed,
663  so that in cases like this the smoothing is turned off (and a
664  warning message is displayed).
665
666* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
667  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
668  fixed.
669
670* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
671  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
672
673* Writing text spectra would only occur when PGPlot output was enabled
674  in the build (it was combined with the plotting of the spectral
675  graphs). This has been changed so that this output can be requested
676  without requiring PGPlot.
677
678* The equation for the beam size in Sec.4.2 of the User Guide was
679  incorrect and has been fixed.
680
681* Minor change to the configure script to improve the detection of the
682  PGPlot library.
683
684Code development notes:
685
686* The main work has been additions and improvements to the interfaces
687  for the Param and the Section classes, as well as new classes to
688  manage the beam information. The efficiency changes mentioned above
689  also affected the internals of some of the PixelInfo classes, and
690  provided additional functions for judging the closeness of
691  neighbouring objects.
692
693Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
694-------------------------------------
695
696Improvements:
697
698* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
699  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
700  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
701  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
702  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
703  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
704  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
705  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
706  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
707  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
708  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
709  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
710
711* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
712  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
713  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
714  minor changes as well.
715
716* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
717  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
718  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
719
720* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
721  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
722  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
723  with running out of memory.
724
725* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
726
727* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
728  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
729  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
730  the plot.
731
732* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
733  functional change was made).
734
735Bug fixes:
736
737* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
738  fixed.
739
740* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
741  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
742  string). This has been fixed.
743
744* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
745  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
746  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
747
748* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
749  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
750  now work as expected.
751
752* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
753  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
754
755* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
756  covered by the verbose flag.
757
758* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
759
760* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
761  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
762
763Code development notes:
764
765* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
766  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
767  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
768  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
769  for finding the velocity widths.
770
771Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
772-------------------------------------
773
774Improvements:
775
776* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
777  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
778  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
779
780* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
781  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
782  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
783  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
784  suggesting this and the above improvement.
785
786* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
787  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
788  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
789  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
790  up all close matches.
791
792* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
793  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
794  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
795  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
796  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
797  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
798  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
799
800* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
801  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
802  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
803  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
804  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
805  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
806
807* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
808  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
809  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
810  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
811
812* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
813  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
814
815* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
816  functionality.
817
818Bug fixes:
819
820* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
821  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
822  large). This has been fixed.
823
824* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
825  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
826  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
827  noticeable depending on the dataset.
828
829* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
830  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
831  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
832
833* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
834  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
835  made more robust.
836
837* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
838  errors, which have been fixed.
839
840* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
841  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
842  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
843  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
844  rectified.
845
846* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
847
848
849Code development notes:
850
851  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
852  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
853  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
854  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
855
856* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
857  robust from a programming point of view.
858
859* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
860  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
861  work.
862
863* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
864  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
865  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
866  cleanly.
867
868* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
869  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
870  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
871  with them appropriately.
872
873
874Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
875----------------------------------
876
877Improvements:
878
879* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
880  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
881  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
882  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
883  the default behaviour stays the same.
884
885* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
886  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
887  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
888  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
889  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
890  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
891
892* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
893  the cube statistics are printed.
894
895
896Bug fixes:
897
898* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
899  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
900
901* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
902  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
903  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
904
905* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
906  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
907  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
908  coordinates. This has been fixed.
909
910* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
911  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
912  fine.
913
914* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
915  properly. This has been remedied.
916
917* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
918  flux units. This has been fixed.
919
920* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
921
922* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
923  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
924
925* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
926  again causing some compilers to fail.
927
928
929Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
930----------------------------------
931
932Improvements:
933
934* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
935  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
936  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
937  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
938  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
939
940* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
941  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
942  that Duchamp provides.
943
944* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
945  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
946  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
947  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
948
949* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
950  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
951  file has something in it.
952
953* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
954  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
955  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
956  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
957
958* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
959  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
960  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
961  around at a later date.
962
963Bug Fixes:
964
965* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
966  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
967
968* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
969  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
970
971* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
972
973* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
974
975* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
976
977* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
978  array. This will reduce memory usage.
979
980* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
981  systems.
982
983* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
984
985* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
986  being lost.
987
988* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
989  the case of non-adjacent merging.
990
991* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
992
993Other:
994
995* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
996  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
997  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
998
999
1000Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
1001----------------------------------
1002
1003New features:
1004
1005* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
1006  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
1007  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
1008  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
1009  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
1010
1011* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
1012  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
1013  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
1014  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
1015  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
1016  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
1017  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
1018  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
1019  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
1020
1021* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
1022  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
1023  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
1024  flux units).
1025
1026Bug fixes:
1027
1028* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
1029  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
1030  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
1031  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
1032  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
1033  difficulties you encounter!
1034
1035* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
1036  efficient.
1037
1038* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
1039  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
1040  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
1041
1042* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
1043  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
1044
1045* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
1046  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
1047  axes were defined).
1048
1049
1050
1051Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
1052----------------------------------
1053
1054Bug fixes:
1055* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
1056  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
1057  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
1058  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
1059
1060* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
1061  of 1/ln(2).
1062
1063* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
1064  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
1065  installation works even if there is no library file.
1066
1067New Features:
1068* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
1069  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
1070  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
1071  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
1072  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
1073  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
1074
1075* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
1076  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
1077  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
1078  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
1079
1080* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
1081  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
1082  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
1083  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
1084  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
1085  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
1086  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
1087  (the default) or "circles".
1088
1089* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
1090  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
1091  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
1092  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
1093
1094Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
1095----------------------------------
1096
1097Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
1098development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
1099but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
1100couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
1101relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
1102
1103* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
1104  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
1105  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
1106  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
1107  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
1108
1109* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
1110  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
1111  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
1112  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
1113  they are not calculated!).
1114
1115* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
1116  the BUNIT determination.
1117
1118* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
1119  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
1120  but came up in parallelisation development).
1121
1122Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
1123----------------------------------
1124
1125A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
1126the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
1127machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
1128so that the compilation should work in all cases.
1129
1130Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
1131directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
1132in compilation.
1133
1134However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
1135this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
1136there is probably no reason to update.
1137
1138Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
1139----------------------------------
1140
1141Compilation:
1142
1143* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
1144  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
1145  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
1146
1147* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
1148  and it should now compile fine.
1149
1150* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
1151
1152
1153Bugfixing:
1154
1155* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
1156  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
1157  together. This should no longer be the case.
1158
1159* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
1160  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
1161  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
1162  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
1163  scaling should be accurate.
1164
1165* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
1166  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
1167  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
1168  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
1169  calculated correctly.
1170
1171* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
1172  of the merging code.
1173
1174New user parameters:
1175
1176* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
1177  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
1178  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
1179
1180* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
1181  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
1182  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
1183  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
1184  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
1185  duchamp-Results.hdr).
1186
1187* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
1188  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
1189  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
1190  absorption lines).
1191
1192* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
1193  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
1194  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
1195  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
1196  value is true.
1197
1198New Feature:
1199
1200* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
1201  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
1202  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
1203  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
1204  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
1205
1206* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
1207  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
1208
1209
1210Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
1211------------------------------------
1212
1213Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
1214
1215* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
1216  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
1217  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
1218  that the same value should appear on all machines.
1219  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
1220  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
1221  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
1222
1223* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
1224  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
1225  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
1226
1227* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
1228  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
1229  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
1230  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
1231  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
1232  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
1233  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
1234
1235* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
1236  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
1237
1238
1239Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
1240------------------------------------
1241
1242Changes made since the last numbered release:
1243
1244EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
1245
1246* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
1247  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
1248  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
1249  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
1250  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
1251  way the list of detected objects is stored.
1252
1253SMOOTHING:
1254
1255* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
1256  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
1257  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
1258  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
1259  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
1260  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
1261  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
1262  smoothing already in use.
1263
1264DETECTIONS:
1265
1266* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
1267  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
1268  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
1269  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
1270  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
1271  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
1272  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
1273  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
1274
1275* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
1276  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
1277  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
1278
1279INPUTS:
1280
1281* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
1282  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
1283  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
1284  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
1285  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
1286
1287* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
1288  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
1289  cube.
1290
1291* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
1292  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
1293  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
1294
1295* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
1296  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
1297
1298OUTPUTS:
1299
1300* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
1301  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
1302
1303* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
1304
1305* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
1306  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
1307  falling off the edge of the page.
1308
1309* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
1310  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
1311  parameter file.
1312
1313* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
1314  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
1315  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
1316
1317BUGFIXES:
1318
1319* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
1320  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
1321  velocity axis setups now.
1322
1323* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
1324  not closing.
1325
1326* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
1327  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
1328  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
1329
1330* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
1331  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
1332  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
1333  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
1334  determination if they are being flagged.
1335
1336
1337
1338Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
1339----------------------------------
1340
1341One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
1342
1343* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
1344  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
1345  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
1346  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
1347  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
1348  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
1349
1350* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
1351  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
1352
1353* Several improvements have been made to the memory
1354  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
1355  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
1356  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
1357  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
1358
1359* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
1360  (and a bit more robust).
1361
1362* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
1363  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
1364  may be expected from VLBI data).
1365
1366* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
1367
1368
1369Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
1370----------------------------------
1371
1372Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
1373
1374* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
1375  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
1376  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
1377  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
1378  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
1379
1380* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
1381  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
1382  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
1383
1384* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
1385  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
1386  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
1387  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
1388  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
1389  become annoying.
1390
1391* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
1392  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
1393
1394* A few minor bug fixes:
1395  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
1396    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
1397  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
1398    when it is read in from a file.
1399
1400* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
1401  remove redundant arrays and variables.
1402
1403
1404Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
1405----------------------------------
1406
1407Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
1408changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
1409number of users, as well as a few extra features.
1410
1411Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
1412
1413USER INTERFACE:
1414
1415* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
1416  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
1417  true or 1 to give the same result).
1418
1419GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
1420
1421* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
1422  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
1423  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
1424  default is true).
1425  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
1426  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
1427  dividing line.
1428
1429* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
1430  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
1431  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
1432  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
1433  arcmin.)
1434
1435* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
1436  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
1437  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
1438  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
1439  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
1440
1441* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
1442  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
1443
1444TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
1445
1446* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
1447  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
1448  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
1449  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
1450
1451* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
1452  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
1453  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
1454  presented above the spectral plots.
1455
1456* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
1457  presentation of information is clearer.
1458
1459FITS I/O RELATED:
1460
1461* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
1462  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
1463  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
1464  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
1465  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
1466  spectral axes).
1467
1468* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
1469  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
1470  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
1471
1472* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
1473  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
1474  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
1475
1476* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
1477  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
1478  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
1479
1480OTHER BUG-FIXING:
1481
1482* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
1483  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
1484  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
1485  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
1486  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
1487  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
1488
1489* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
1490  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
1491
1492* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
1493  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
1494
1495* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
1496  enter a beam size as a parameter.
1497
1498* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
1499  robustness.
1500
1501
1502Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
1503--------------------------------
1504
1505The first full release version.
1506
1507Several major changes compared to previous version:
1508
1509* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
1510  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
1511  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
1512  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
1513  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
1514  code (easier for me!).
1515
1516* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
1517  just doing it in 3-D.
1518
1519* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
1520  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
1521  FITS header) are included in the output table.
1522
1523* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
1524  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
1525  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
1526
1527Other, more minor changes include:
1528
1529* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
1530  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
1531  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
1532
1533* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
1534  length indicated.
1535
1536* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
1537  was run.
1538
1539* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
1540  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
1541
1542Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
1543
1544
1545Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
1546--------------------------------
1547
1548* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
1549  location or negative enclosed flux.
1550
1551* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
1552  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
1553  a full parameter file.
1554
1555* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
1556  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
1557
1558* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
1559
1560* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
1561  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
1562
1563* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
1564  functions, rather than a system call.
1565
1566* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
1567  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
1568  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
1569  improved the formatting a little.
1570
1571* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
1572  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
1573  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
1574  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
1575  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
1576  the cube anew.
1577
1578* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
1579
1580
1581
1582Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
1583--------------------------------
1584
1585First public release version.
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