source: trunk/CHANGES @ 801

Last change on this file since 801 was 799, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 13 years ago

Changes for the next incremental release.

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1Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/02/18)
2-------------------------------------
3
4Improvements:
5
6* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
7  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
8  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
9  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
10
11* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
12  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
13  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
14  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
15  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
16
17* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
18  more information.
19
20Bug Fixes:
21
22* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
23  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
24  fixed.
25
26* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
27  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
28
29Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
30-------------------------------------
31
32Improvements:
33
34* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
35  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
36  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
37  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
38  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
39  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
40  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
41  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
42  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
43  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
44  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
45  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
46
47* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
48  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
49  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
50  minor changes as well.
51
52* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
53  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
54  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
55
56* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
57  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
58  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
59  with running out of memory.
60
61* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
62
63* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
64  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
65  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
66  the plot.
67
68* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
69  functional change was made).
70
71Bug fixes:
72
73* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
74  fixed.
75
76* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
77  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
78  string). This has been fixed.
79
80* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
81  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
82  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
83
84* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
85  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
86  now work as expected.
87
88* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
89  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
90
91* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
92  covered by the verbose flag.
93
94* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
95
96* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
97  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
98
99Code development notes:
100
101* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
102  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
103  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
104  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
105  for finding the velocity widths.
106
107Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
108-------------------------------------
109
110Improvements:
111
112* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
113  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
114  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
115
116* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
117  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
118  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
119  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
120  suggesting this and the above improvement.
121
122* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
123  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
124  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
125  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
126  up all close matches.
127
128* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
129  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
130  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
131  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
132  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
133  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
134  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
135
136* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
137  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
138  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
139  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
140  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
141  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
142
143* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
144  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
145  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
146  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
147
148* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
149  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
150
151* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
152  functionality.
153
154Bug fixes:
155
156* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
157  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
158  large). This has been fixed.
159
160* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
161  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
162  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
163  noticeable depending on the dataset.
164
165* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
166  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
167  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
168
169* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
170  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
171  made more robust.
172
173* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
174  errors, which have been fixed.
175
176* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
177  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
178  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
179  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
180  rectified.
181
182* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
183
184
185Code development notes:
186
187  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
188  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
189  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
190  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
191
192* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
193  robust from a programming point of view.
194
195* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
196  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
197  work.
198
199* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
200  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
201  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
202  cleanly.
203
204* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
205  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
206  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
207  with them appropriately.
208
209
210Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
211----------------------------------
212
213Improvements:
214
215* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
216  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
217  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
218  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
219  the default behaviour stays the same.
220
221* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
222  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
223  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
224  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
225  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
226  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
227
228* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
229  the cube statistics are printed.
230
231
232Bug fixes:
233
234* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
235  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
236
237* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
238  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
239  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
240
241* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
242  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
243  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
244  coordinates. This has been fixed.
245
246* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
247  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
248  fine.
249
250* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
251  properly. This has been remedied.
252
253* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
254  flux units. This has been fixed.
255
256* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
257
258* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
259  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
260
261* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
262  again causing some compilers to fail.
263
264
265Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
266----------------------------------
267
268Improvements:
269
270* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
271  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
272  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
273  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
274  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
275
276* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
277  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
278  that Duchamp provides.
279
280* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
281  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
282  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
283  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
284
285* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
286  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
287  file has something in it.
288
289* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
290  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
291  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
292  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
293
294* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
295  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
296  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
297  around at a later date.
298
299Bug Fixes:
300
301* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
302  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
303
304* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
305  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
306
307* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
308
309* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
310
311* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
312
313* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
314  array. This will reduce memory usage.
315
316* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
317  systems.
318
319* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
320
321* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
322  being lost.
323
324* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
325  the case of non-adjacent merging.
326
327* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
328
329Other:
330
331* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
332  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
333  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
334
335
336Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
337----------------------------------
338
339New features:
340
341* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
342  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
343  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
344  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
345  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
346
347* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
348  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
349  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
350  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
351  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
352  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
353  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
354  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
355  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
356
357* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
358  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
359  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
360  flux units).
361
362Bug fixes:
363
364* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
365  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
366  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
367  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
368  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
369  difficulties you encounter!
370
371* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
372  efficient.
373
374* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
375  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
376  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
377
378* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
379  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
380
381* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
382  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
383  axes were defined).
384
385
386
387Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
388----------------------------------
389
390Bug fixes:
391* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
392  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
393  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
394  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
395
396* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
397  of 1/ln(2).
398
399* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
400  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
401  installation works even if there is no library file.
402
403New Features:
404* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
405  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
406  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
407  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
408  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
409  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
410
411* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
412  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
413  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
414  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
415
416* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
417  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
418  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
419  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
420  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
421  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
422  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
423  (the default) or "circles".
424
425* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
426  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
427  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
428  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
429
430Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
431----------------------------------
432
433Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
434development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
435but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
436couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
437relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
438
439* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
440  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
441  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
442  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
443  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
444
445* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
446  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
447  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
448  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
449  they are not calculated!).
450
451* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
452  the BUNIT determination.
453
454* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
455  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
456  but came up in parallelisation development).
457
458Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
459----------------------------------
460
461A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
462the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
463machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
464so that the compilation should work in all cases.
465
466Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
467directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
468in compilation.
469
470However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
471this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
472there is probably no reason to update.
473
474Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
475----------------------------------
476
477Compilation:
478
479* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
480  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
481  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
482
483* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
484  and it should now compile fine.
485
486* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
487
488
489Bugfixing:
490
491* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
492  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
493  together. This should no longer be the case.
494
495* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
496  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
497  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
498  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
499  scaling should be accurate.
500
501* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
502  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
503  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
504  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
505  calculated correctly.
506
507* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
508  of the merging code.
509
510New user parameters:
511
512* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
513  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
514  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
515
516* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
517  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
518  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
519  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
520  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
521  duchamp-Results.hdr).
522
523* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
524  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
525  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
526  absorption lines).
527
528* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
529  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
530  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
531  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
532  value is true.
533
534New Feature:
535
536* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
537  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
538  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
539  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
540  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
541
542* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
543  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
544
545
546Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
547------------------------------------
548
549Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
550
551* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
552  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
553  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
554  that the same value should appear on all machines.
555  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
556  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
557  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
558
559* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
560  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
561  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
562
563* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
564  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
565  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
566  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
567  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
568  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
569  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
570
571* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
572  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
573
574
575Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
576------------------------------------
577
578Changes made since the last numbered release:
579
580EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
581
582* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
583  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
584  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
585  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
586  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
587  way the list of detected objects is stored.
588
589SMOOTHING:
590
591* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
592  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
593  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
594  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
595  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
596  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
597  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
598  smoothing already in use.
599
600DETECTIONS:
601
602* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
603  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
604  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
605  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
606  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
607  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
608  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
609  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
610
611* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
612  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
613  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
614
615INPUTS:
616
617* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
618  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
619  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
620  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
621  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
622
623* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
624  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
625  cube.
626
627* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
628  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
629  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
630
631* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
632  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
633
634OUTPUTS:
635
636* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
637  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
638
639* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
640
641* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
642  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
643  falling off the edge of the page.
644
645* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
646  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
647  parameter file.
648
649* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
650  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
651  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
652
653BUGFIXES:
654
655* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
656  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
657  velocity axis setups now.
658
659* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
660  not closing.
661
662* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
663  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
664  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
665
666* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
667  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
668  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
669  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
670  determination if they are being flagged.
671
672
673
674Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
675----------------------------------
676
677One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
678
679* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
680  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
681  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
682  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
683  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
684  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
685
686* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
687  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
688
689* Several improvements have been made to the memory
690  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
691  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
692  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
693  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
694
695* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
696  (and a bit more robust).
697
698* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
699  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
700  may be expected from VLBI data).
701
702* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
703
704
705Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
706----------------------------------
707
708Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
709
710* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
711  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
712  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
713  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
714  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
715
716* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
717  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
718  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
719
720* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
721  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
722  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
723  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
724  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
725  become annoying.
726
727* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
728  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
729
730* A few minor bug fixes:
731  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
732    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
733  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
734    when it is read in from a file.
735
736* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
737  remove redundant arrays and variables.
738
739
740Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
741----------------------------------
742
743Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
744changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
745number of users, as well as a few extra features.
746
747Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
748
749USER INTERFACE:
750
751* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
752  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
753  true or 1 to give the same result).
754
755GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
756
757* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
758  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
759  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
760  default is true).
761  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
762  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
763  dividing line.
764
765* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
766  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
767  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
768  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
769  arcmin.)
770
771* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
772  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
773  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
774  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
775  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
776
777* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
778  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
779
780TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
781
782* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
783  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
784  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
785  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
786
787* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
788  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
789  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
790  presented above the spectral plots.
791
792* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
793  presentation of information is clearer.
794
795FITS I/O RELATED:
796
797* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
798  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
799  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
800  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
801  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
802  spectral axes).
803
804* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
805  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
806  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
807
808* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
809  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
810  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
811
812* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
813  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
814  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
815
816OTHER BUG-FIXING:
817
818* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
819  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
820  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
821  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
822  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
823  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
824
825* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
826  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
827
828* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
829  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
830
831* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
832  enter a beam size as a parameter.
833
834* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
835  robustness.
836
837
838Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
839--------------------------------
840
841The first full release version.
842
843Several major changes compared to previous version:
844
845* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
846  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
847  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
848  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
849  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
850  code (easier for me!).
851
852* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
853  just doing it in 3-D.
854
855* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
856  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
857  FITS header) are included in the output table.
858
859* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
860  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
861  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
862
863Other, more minor changes include:
864
865* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
866  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
867  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
868
869* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
870  length indicated.
871
872* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
873  was run.
874
875* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
876  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
877
878Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
879
880
881Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
882--------------------------------
883
884* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
885  location or negative enclosed flux.
886
887* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
888  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
889  a full parameter file.
890
891* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
892  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
893
894* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
895
896* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
897  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
898
899* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
900  functions, rather than a system call.
901
902* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
903  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
904  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
905  improved the formatting a little.
906
907* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
908  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
909  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
910  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
911  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
912  the cube anew.
913
914* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
915
916
917
918Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
919--------------------------------
920
921First public release version.
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