source: trunk/CHANGES @ 520

Last change on this file since 520 was 520, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 15 years ago

Minor changes to the documentation, and updating the CHANGES doc.

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1Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2008/11/28)
2----------------------------------
3
4Improvements:
5
6* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
7  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
8  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
9  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
10
11* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
12  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
13  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
14  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
15
16* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
17  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
18  file has something in it.
19
20* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
21  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
22  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
23  around at a later date.
24
25Bug Fixes:
26
27* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
28  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
29
30* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
31  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
32
33* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
34
35* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
36
37* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
38
39* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
40  array. This will reduce memory usage.
41
42* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
43  systems.
44
45* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
46
47* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
48  being lost.
49
50* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
51  the case of non-adjacent merging.
52
53Other:
54
55* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
56  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
57  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
58
59Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
60----------------------------------
61
62New features:
63
64* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
65  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
66  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
67  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
68  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
69
70* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
71  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
72  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
73  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
74  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
75  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
76  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
77  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
78  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
79
80* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
81  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
82  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
83  flux units).
84
85Bug fixes:
86
87* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
88  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
89  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
90  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
91  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
92  difficulties you encounter!
93
94* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
95  efficient.
96
97* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
98  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
99  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
100
101* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
102  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
103
104* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
105  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
106  axes were defined).
107
108
109
110Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
111----------------------------------
112
113Bug fixes:
114* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
115  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
116  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
117  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
118
119* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
120  of 1/ln(2).
121
122* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
123  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
124  installation works even if there is no library file.
125
126New Features:
127* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
128  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
129  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
130  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
131  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
132  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
133
134* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
135  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
136  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
137  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
138
139* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
140  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
141  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
142  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
143  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
144  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
145  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
146  (the default) or "circles".
147
148* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
149  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
150  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
151  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
152
153Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
154----------------------------------
155
156Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
157development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
158but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
159couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
160relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
161
162* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
163  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
164  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
165  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
166  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
167
168* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
169  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
170  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
171  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
172  they are not calculated!).
173
174* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
175  the BUNIT determination.
176
177* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
178  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
179  but came up in parallelisation development).
180
181Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
182----------------------------------
183
184A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
185the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
186machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
187so that the compilation should work in all cases.
188
189Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
190directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
191in compilation.
192
193However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
194this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
195there is probably no reason to update.
196
197Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
198----------------------------------
199
200Compilation:
201
202* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
203  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
204  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
205
206* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
207  and it should now compile fine.
208
209* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
210
211
212Bugfixing:
213
214* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
215  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
216  together. This should no longer be the case.
217
218* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
219  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
220  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
221  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
222  scaling should be accurate.
223
224* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
225  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
226  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
227  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
228  calculated correctly.
229
230* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
231  of the merging code.
232
233New user parameters:
234
235* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
236  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
237  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
238
239* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
240  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
241  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
242  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
243  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
244  duchamp-Results.hdr).
245
246* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
247  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
248  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
249  absorption lines).
250
251* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
252  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
253  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
254  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
255  value is true.
256
257New Feature:
258
259* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
260  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
261  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
262  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
263  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
264
265* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
266  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
267
268
269Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
270------------------------------------
271
272Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
273
274* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
275  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
276  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
277  that the same value should appear on all machines.
278  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
279  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
280  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
281
282* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
283  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
284  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
285
286* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
287  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
288  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
289  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
290  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
291  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
292  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
293
294* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
295  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
296
297
298Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
299------------------------------------
300
301Changes made since the last numbered release:
302
303EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
304
305* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
306  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
307  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
308  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
309  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
310  way the list of detected objects is stored.
311
312SMOOTHING:
313
314* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
315  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
316  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
317  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
318  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
319  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
320  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
321  smoothing already in use.
322
323DETECTIONS:
324
325* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
326  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
327  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
328  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
329  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
330  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
331  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
332  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
333
334* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
335  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
336  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
337
338INPUTS:
339
340* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
341  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
342  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
343  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
344  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
345
346* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
347  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
348  cube.
349
350* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
351  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
352  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
353
354* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
355  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
356
357OUTPUTS:
358
359* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
360  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
361
362* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
363
364* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
365  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
366  falling off the edge of the page.
367
368* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
369  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
370  parameter file.
371
372* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
373  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
374  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
375
376BUGFIXES:
377
378* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
379  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
380  velocity axis setups now.
381
382* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
383  not closing.
384
385* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
386  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
387  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
388
389* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
390  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
391  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
392  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
393  determination if they are being flagged.
394
395
396
397Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
398----------------------------------
399
400One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
401
402* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
403  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
404  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
405  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
406  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
407  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
408
409* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
410  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
411
412* Several improvements have been made to the memory
413  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
414  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
415  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
416  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
417
418* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
419  (and a bit more robust).
420
421* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
422  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
423  may be expected from VLBI data).
424
425* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
426
427
428Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
429----------------------------------
430
431Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
432
433* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
434  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
435  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
436  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
437  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
438
439* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
440  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
441  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
442
443* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
444  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
445  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
446  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
447  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
448  become annoying.
449
450* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
451  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
452
453* A few minor bug fixes:
454  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
455    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
456  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
457    when it is read in from a file.
458
459* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
460  remove redundant arrays and variables.
461
462
463Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
464----------------------------------
465
466Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
467changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
468number of users, as well as a few extra features.
469
470Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
471
472USER INTERFACE:
473
474* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
475  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
476  true or 1 to give the same result).
477
478GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
479
480* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
481  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
482  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
483  default is true).
484  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
485  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
486  dividing line.
487
488* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
489  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
490  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
491  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
492  arcmin.)
493
494* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
495  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
496  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
497  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
498  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
499
500* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
501  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
502
503TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
504
505* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
506  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
507  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
508  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
509
510* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
511  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
512  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
513  presented above the spectral plots.
514
515* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
516  presentation of information is clearer.
517
518FITS I/O RELATED:
519
520* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
521  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
522  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
523  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
524  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
525  spectral axes).
526
527* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
528  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
529  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
530
531* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
532  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
533  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
534
535* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
536  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
537  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
538
539OTHER BUG-FIXING:
540
541* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
542  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
543  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
544  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
545  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
546  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
547
548* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
549  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
550
551* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
552  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
553
554* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
555  enter a beam size as a parameter.
556
557* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
558  robustness.
559
560
561Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
562--------------------------------
563
564The first full release version.
565
566Several major changes compared to previous version:
567
568* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
569  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
570  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
571  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
572  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
573  code (easier for me!).
574
575* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
576  just doing it in 3-D.
577
578* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
579  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
580  FITS header) are included in the output table.
581
582* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
583  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
584  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
585
586Other, more minor changes include:
587
588* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
589  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
590  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
591
592* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
593  length indicated.
594
595* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
596  was run.
597
598* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
599  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
600
601Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
602
603
604Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
605--------------------------------
606
607* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
608  location or negative enclosed flux.
609
610* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
611  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
612  a full parameter file.
613
614* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
615  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
616
617* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
618
619* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
620  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
621
622* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
623  functions, rather than a system call.
624
625* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
626  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
627  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
628  improved the formatting a little.
629
630* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
631  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
632  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
633  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
634  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
635  the cube anew.
636
637* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
638
639
640
641Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
642--------------------------------
643
644First public release version.
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