source: trunk/CHANGES @ 480

Last change on this file since 480 was 480, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 16 years ago

Documenting some recent changes.

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1Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/08/31)
2----------------------------------
3
4New features:
5
6* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
7  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
8  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
9  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
10  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
11
12* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
13  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
14  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
15  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
16  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
17  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
18  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
19  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
20  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
21
22Bug fixes:
23
24* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the
25
26Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
27----------------------------------
28
29Bug fixes:
30* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
31  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
32  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
33  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
34
35* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
36  of 1/ln(2).
37
38* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
39  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
40  installation works even if there is no library file.
41
42New Features:
43* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
44  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
45  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
46  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
47  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
48  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
49
50* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
51  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
52  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
53  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
54
55* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
56  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
57  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
58  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
59  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
60  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
61  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
62  (the default) or "circles".
63
64* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
65  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
66  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
67  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
68
69Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
70----------------------------------
71
72Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
73development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
74but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
75couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
76relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
77
78* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
79  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
80  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
81  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
82  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
83
84* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
85  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
86  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
87  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
88  they are not calculated!).
89
90* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
91  the BUNIT determination.
92
93* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
94  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
95  but came up in parallelisation development).
96
97Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
98----------------------------------
99
100A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
101the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
102machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
103so that the compilation should work in all cases.
104
105Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
106directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
107in compilation.
108
109However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
110this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
111there is probably no reason to update.
112
113Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
114----------------------------------
115
116Compilation:
117
118* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
119  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
120  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
121
122* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
123  and it should now compile fine.
124
125* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
126
127
128Bugfixing:
129
130* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
131  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
132  together. This should no longer be the case.
133
134* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
135  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
136  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
137  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
138  scaling should be accurate.
139
140* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
141  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
142  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
143  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
144  calculated correctly.
145
146* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
147  of the merging code.
148
149New user parameters:
150
151* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
152  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
153  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
154
155* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
156  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
157  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
158  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
159  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
160  duchamp-Results.hdr).
161
162* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
163  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
164  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
165  absorption lines).
166
167* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
168  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
169  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
170  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
171  value is true.
172
173New Feature:
174
175* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
176  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
177  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
178  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
179  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
180
181* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
182  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
183
184
185Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
186------------------------------------
187
188Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
189
190* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
191  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
192  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
193  that the same value should appear on all machines.
194  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
195  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
196  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
197
198* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
199  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
200  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
201
202* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
203  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
204  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
205  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
206  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
207  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
208  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
209
210* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
211  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
212
213
214Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
215------------------------------------
216
217Changes made since the last numbered release:
218
219EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
220
221* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
222  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
223  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
224  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
225  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
226  way the list of detected objects is stored.
227
228SMOOTHING:
229
230* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
231  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
232  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
233  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
234  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
235  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
236  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
237  smoothing already in use.
238
239DETECTIONS:
240
241* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
242  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
243  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
244  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
245  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
246  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
247  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
248  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
249
250* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
251  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
252  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
253
254INPUTS:
255
256* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
257  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
258  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
259  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
260  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
261
262* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
263  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
264  cube.
265
266* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
267  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
268  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
269
270* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
271  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
272
273OUTPUTS:
274
275* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
276  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
277
278* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
279
280* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
281  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
282  falling off the edge of the page.
283
284* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
285  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
286  parameter file.
287
288* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
289  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
290  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
291
292BUGFIXES:
293
294* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
295  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
296  velocity axis setups now.
297
298* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
299  not closing.
300
301* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
302  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
303  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
304
305* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
306  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
307  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
308  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
309  determination if they are being flagged.
310
311
312
313Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
314----------------------------------
315
316One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
317
318* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
319  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
320  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
321  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
322  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
323  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
324
325* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
326  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
327
328* Several improvements have been made to the memory
329  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
330  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
331  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
332  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
333
334* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
335  (and a bit more robust).
336
337* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
338  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
339  may be expected from VLBI data).
340
341* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
342
343
344Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
345----------------------------------
346
347Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
348
349* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
350  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
351  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
352  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
353  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
354
355* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
356  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
357  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
358
359* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
360  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
361  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
362  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
363  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
364  become annoying.
365
366* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
367  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
368
369* A few minor bug fixes:
370  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
371    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
372  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
373    when it is read in from a file.
374
375* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
376  remove redundant arrays and variables.
377
378
379Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
380----------------------------------
381
382Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
383changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
384number of users, as well as a few extra features.
385
386Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
387
388USER INTERFACE:
389
390* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
391  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
392  true or 1 to give the same result).
393
394GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
395
396* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
397  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
398  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
399  default is true).
400  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
401  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
402  dividing line.
403
404* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
405  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
406  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
407  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
408  arcmin.)
409
410* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
411  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
412  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
413  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
414  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
415
416* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
417  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
418
419TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
420
421* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
422  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
423  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
424  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
425
426* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
427  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
428  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
429  presented above the spectral plots.
430
431* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
432  presentation of information is clearer.
433
434FITS I/O RELATED:
435
436* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
437  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
438  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
439  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
440  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
441  spectral axes).
442
443* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
444  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
445  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
446
447* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
448  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
449  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
450
451* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
452  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
453  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
454
455OTHER BUG-FIXING:
456
457* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
458  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
459  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
460  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
461  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
462  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
463
464* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
465  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
466
467* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
468  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
469
470* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
471  enter a beam size as a parameter.
472
473* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
474  robustness.
475
476
477Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
478--------------------------------
479
480The first full release version.
481
482Several major changes compared to previous version:
483
484* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
485  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
486  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
487  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
488  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
489  code (easier for me!).
490
491* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
492  just doing it in 3-D.
493
494* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
495  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
496  FITS header) are included in the output table.
497
498* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
499  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
500  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
501
502Other, more minor changes include:
503
504* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
505  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
506  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
507
508* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
509  length indicated.
510
511* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
512  was run.
513
514* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
515  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
516
517Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
518
519
520Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
521--------------------------------
522
523* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
524  location or negative enclosed flux.
525
526* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
527  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
528  a full parameter file.
529
530* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
531  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
532
533* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
534
535* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
536  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
537
538* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
539  functions, rather than a system call.
540
541* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
542  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
543  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
544  improved the formatting a little.
545
546* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
547  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
548  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
549  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
550  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
551  the cube anew.
552
553* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
554
555
556
557Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
558--------------------------------
559
560First public release version.
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