source: trunk/CHANGES @ 928

Last change on this file since 928 was 928, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 12 years ago

Starting to make the CHANGES entry for the next release.

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1Duchamp version 1.1.14 (2012/05/XX)
2-------------------------------------
3
4Bug fixes:
5
6
7New features:
8
9
10Code base development notes:
11
12
13
14Duchamp version 1.1.13 (2011/04/10)
15-------------------------------------
16
17Bug fixes:
18
19* The median statistics calculations had a bug in the test for whether
20  the array under consideration was of even size. The correction for
21  this can mean small differences in the resulting values. This can
22  flow through to calculated detection thresholds - please check this
23  with your data if you use this mode!
24
25* The reconstruction code had a bug where the incorrect number of
26  scales was being used. This occurred when the blank pixel flag was
27  set, and when the spectral dimension was smaller than both the
28  spatial dimensions.
29
30Other:
31
32* The default value of the blank pixel flag has been set to false,
33  rather than true. For Duchamp, this should not matter, as it is set
34  when the FITS file is read in. For external code using, for
35  instance, the reconstruction algorithms, this default may be
36  important. Having it true was contributing to the second bug listed
37  above. It also makes more sense for it to be false unless explicitly
38  set in some way.
39
40* The reconstruction code has been streamlined a little, reducing its
41  memory impact and using more appropriate variable types
42  (eg. unsigned ints instead of ints and so forth).
43
44* For those who care about the actual code base, the statistics
45  functions have been expanded, and separated from getStats.cc into
46  "normal" and "robust" versions.
47
48
49Duchamp version 1.1.12 (2011/03/18)
50-------------------------------------
51
52Bug fixes:
53
54* The velocity width calculations had a bug that occasionally led to
55  very large values. The widths are calculated using the integrated
56  spectrum, using a threshold relative to its peak. In v.1.1.10 and
57  1.1.11, however, the peak was searched for over the entire spectral
58  range, rather than just the range for the current object. This led
59  to spurious values. This has been fixed, so that the peak is only
60  searched for within the detected ranage of the object.
61
62* Both the pixel and statistics subsections are now more carefully
63  examined, with errors reported if there are no valid pixels in the
64  pixel subsection, or if the statistics subsection does not intersect
65  with the pixel subsection.
66
67Other:
68
69* The configure script has been slightly improved so that the pgsbox
70  library is only added if PGPlot has been enabled - this is
71  particularly necessary with the slightly changed build procedure for
72  recent wcslib versions.
73
74* In a related note, one file - momentMap.cc - had some #include
75  statements that failed when PGPlot (and hence pgsbox in WCSLIB) was
76  not enabled. These were actually unnecesssary and have been removed.
77
78* There is a new input parameter - flagPlotSpectra - that allows the
79  user to turn off the production of the spectral plots. It defaults
80  to true (meaning the plots are produced).
81
82
83Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/03/01)
84-------------------------------------
85
86Improvements:
87
88* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
89  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
90  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
91  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
92
93* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
94  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
95  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
96  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
97  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
98
99* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
100  more information.
101
102Bug Fixes:
103
104* The statistics section (statSec) could be larger than the image
105  subsection (if provided), yet the pixels required would never be
106  read in from the FITS file. The behaviour has been changed so that
107  the statSec, if requested, is trimmed to be wholly within the image
108  section.
109
110* It was possible to request, for instance, spectral smoothing on a 2D
111  image. This resulted in a blank smoothed array, which led to
112  problems in the calculations of statistics (and hence the
113  threshold), as well as subsequent calculations. This has been fixed,
114  so that in cases like this the smoothing is turned off (and a
115  warning message is displayed).
116
117* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
118  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
119  fixed.
120
121* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
122  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
123
124* Writing text spectra would only occur when PGPlot output was enabled
125  in the build (it was combined with the plotting of the spectral
126  graphs). This has been changed so that this output can be requested
127  without requiring PGPlot.
128
129* The equation for the beam size in Sec.4.2 of the User Guide was
130  incorrect and has been fixed.
131
132* Minor change to the configure script to improve the detection of the
133  PGPlot library.
134
135Code development notes:
136
137* The main work has been additions and improvements to the interfaces
138  for the Param and the Section classes, as well as new classes to
139  manage the beam information. The efficiency changes mentioned above
140  also affected the internals of some of the PixelInfo classes, and
141  provided additional functions for judging the closeness of
142  neighbouring objects.
143
144Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
145-------------------------------------
146
147Improvements:
148
149* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
150  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
151  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
152  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
153  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
154  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
155  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
156  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
157  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
158  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
159  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
160  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
161
162* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
163  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
164  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
165  minor changes as well.
166
167* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
168  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
169  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
170
171* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
172  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
173  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
174  with running out of memory.
175
176* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
177
178* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
179  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
180  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
181  the plot.
182
183* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
184  functional change was made).
185
186Bug fixes:
187
188* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
189  fixed.
190
191* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
192  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
193  string). This has been fixed.
194
195* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
196  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
197  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
198
199* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
200  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
201  now work as expected.
202
203* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
204  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
205
206* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
207  covered by the verbose flag.
208
209* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
210
211* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
212  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
213
214Code development notes:
215
216* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
217  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
218  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
219  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
220  for finding the velocity widths.
221
222Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
223-------------------------------------
224
225Improvements:
226
227* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
228  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
229  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
230
231* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
232  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
233  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
234  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
235  suggesting this and the above improvement.
236
237* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
238  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
239  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
240  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
241  up all close matches.
242
243* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
244  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
245  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
246  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
247  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
248  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
249  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
250
251* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
252  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
253  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
254  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
255  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
256  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
257
258* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
259  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
260  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
261  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
262
263* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
264  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
265
266* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
267  functionality.
268
269Bug fixes:
270
271* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
272  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
273  large). This has been fixed.
274
275* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
276  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
277  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
278  noticeable depending on the dataset.
279
280* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
281  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
282  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
283
284* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
285  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
286  made more robust.
287
288* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
289  errors, which have been fixed.
290
291* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
292  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
293  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
294  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
295  rectified.
296
297* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
298
299
300Code development notes:
301
302  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
303  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
304  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
305  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
306
307* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
308  robust from a programming point of view.
309
310* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
311  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
312  work.
313
314* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
315  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
316  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
317  cleanly.
318
319* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
320  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
321  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
322  with them appropriately.
323
324
325Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
326----------------------------------
327
328Improvements:
329
330* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
331  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
332  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
333  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
334  the default behaviour stays the same.
335
336* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
337  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
338  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
339  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
340  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
341  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
342
343* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
344  the cube statistics are printed.
345
346
347Bug fixes:
348
349* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
350  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
351
352* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
353  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
354  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
355
356* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
357  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
358  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
359  coordinates. This has been fixed.
360
361* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
362  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
363  fine.
364
365* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
366  properly. This has been remedied.
367
368* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
369  flux units. This has been fixed.
370
371* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
372
373* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
374  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
375
376* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
377  again causing some compilers to fail.
378
379
380Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
381----------------------------------
382
383Improvements:
384
385* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
386  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
387  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
388  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
389  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
390
391* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
392  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
393  that Duchamp provides.
394
395* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
396  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
397  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
398  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
399
400* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
401  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
402  file has something in it.
403
404* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
405  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
406  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
407  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
408
409* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
410  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
411  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
412  around at a later date.
413
414Bug Fixes:
415
416* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
417  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
418
419* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
420  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
421
422* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
423
424* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
425
426* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
427
428* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
429  array. This will reduce memory usage.
430
431* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
432  systems.
433
434* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
435
436* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
437  being lost.
438
439* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
440  the case of non-adjacent merging.
441
442* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
443
444Other:
445
446* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
447  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
448  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
449
450
451Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
452----------------------------------
453
454New features:
455
456* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
457  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
458  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
459  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
460  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
461
462* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
463  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
464  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
465  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
466  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
467  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
468  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
469  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
470  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
471
472* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
473  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
474  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
475  flux units).
476
477Bug fixes:
478
479* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
480  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
481  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
482  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
483  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
484  difficulties you encounter!
485
486* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
487  efficient.
488
489* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
490  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
491  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
492
493* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
494  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
495
496* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
497  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
498  axes were defined).
499
500
501
502Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
503----------------------------------
504
505Bug fixes:
506* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
507  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
508  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
509  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
510
511* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
512  of 1/ln(2).
513
514* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
515  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
516  installation works even if there is no library file.
517
518New Features:
519* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
520  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
521  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
522  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
523  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
524  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
525
526* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
527  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
528  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
529  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
530
531* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
532  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
533  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
534  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
535  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
536  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
537  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
538  (the default) or "circles".
539
540* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
541  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
542  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
543  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
544
545Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
546----------------------------------
547
548Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
549development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
550but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
551couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
552relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
553
554* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
555  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
556  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
557  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
558  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
559
560* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
561  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
562  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
563  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
564  they are not calculated!).
565
566* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
567  the BUNIT determination.
568
569* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
570  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
571  but came up in parallelisation development).
572
573Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
574----------------------------------
575
576A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
577the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
578machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
579so that the compilation should work in all cases.
580
581Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
582directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
583in compilation.
584
585However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
586this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
587there is probably no reason to update.
588
589Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
590----------------------------------
591
592Compilation:
593
594* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
595  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
596  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
597
598* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
599  and it should now compile fine.
600
601* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
602
603
604Bugfixing:
605
606* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
607  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
608  together. This should no longer be the case.
609
610* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
611  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
612  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
613  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
614  scaling should be accurate.
615
616* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
617  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
618  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
619  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
620  calculated correctly.
621
622* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
623  of the merging code.
624
625New user parameters:
626
627* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
628  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
629  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
630
631* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
632  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
633  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
634  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
635  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
636  duchamp-Results.hdr).
637
638* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
639  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
640  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
641  absorption lines).
642
643* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
644  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
645  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
646  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
647  value is true.
648
649New Feature:
650
651* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
652  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
653  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
654  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
655  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
656
657* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
658  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
659
660
661Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
662------------------------------------
663
664Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
665
666* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
667  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
668  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
669  that the same value should appear on all machines.
670  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
671  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
672  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
673
674* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
675  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
676  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
677
678* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
679  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
680  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
681  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
682  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
683  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
684  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
685
686* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
687  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
688
689
690Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
691------------------------------------
692
693Changes made since the last numbered release:
694
695EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
696
697* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
698  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
699  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
700  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
701  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
702  way the list of detected objects is stored.
703
704SMOOTHING:
705
706* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
707  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
708  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
709  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
710  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
711  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
712  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
713  smoothing already in use.
714
715DETECTIONS:
716
717* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
718  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
719  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
720  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
721  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
722  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
723  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
724  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
725
726* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
727  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
728  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
729
730INPUTS:
731
732* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
733  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
734  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
735  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
736  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
737
738* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
739  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
740  cube.
741
742* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
743  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
744  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
745
746* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
747  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
748
749OUTPUTS:
750
751* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
752  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
753
754* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
755
756* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
757  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
758  falling off the edge of the page.
759
760* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
761  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
762  parameter file.
763
764* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
765  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
766  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
767
768BUGFIXES:
769
770* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
771  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
772  velocity axis setups now.
773
774* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
775  not closing.
776
777* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
778  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
779  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
780
781* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
782  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
783  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
784  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
785  determination if they are being flagged.
786
787
788
789Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
790----------------------------------
791
792One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
793
794* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
795  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
796  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
797  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
798  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
799  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
800
801* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
802  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
803
804* Several improvements have been made to the memory
805  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
806  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
807  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
808  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
809
810* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
811  (and a bit more robust).
812
813* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
814  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
815  may be expected from VLBI data).
816
817* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
818
819
820Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
821----------------------------------
822
823Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
824
825* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
826  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
827  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
828  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
829  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
830
831* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
832  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
833  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
834
835* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
836  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
837  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
838  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
839  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
840  become annoying.
841
842* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
843  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
844
845* A few minor bug fixes:
846  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
847    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
848  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
849    when it is read in from a file.
850
851* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
852  remove redundant arrays and variables.
853
854
855Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
856----------------------------------
857
858Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
859changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
860number of users, as well as a few extra features.
861
862Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
863
864USER INTERFACE:
865
866* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
867  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
868  true or 1 to give the same result).
869
870GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
871
872* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
873  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
874  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
875  default is true).
876  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
877  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
878  dividing line.
879
880* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
881  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
882  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
883  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
884  arcmin.)
885
886* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
887  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
888  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
889  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
890  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
891
892* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
893  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
894
895TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
896
897* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
898  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
899  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
900  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
901
902* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
903  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
904  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
905  presented above the spectral plots.
906
907* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
908  presentation of information is clearer.
909
910FITS I/O RELATED:
911
912* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
913  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
914  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
915  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
916  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
917  spectral axes).
918
919* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
920  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
921  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
922
923* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
924  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
925  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
926
927* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
928  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
929  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
930
931OTHER BUG-FIXING:
932
933* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
934  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
935  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
936  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
937  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
938  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
939
940* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
941  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
942
943* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
944  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
945
946* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
947  enter a beam size as a parameter.
948
949* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
950  robustness.
951
952
953Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
954--------------------------------
955
956The first full release version.
957
958Several major changes compared to previous version:
959
960* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
961  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
962  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
963  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
964  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
965  code (easier for me!).
966
967* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
968  just doing it in 3-D.
969
970* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
971  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
972  FITS header) are included in the output table.
973
974* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
975  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
976  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
977
978Other, more minor changes include:
979
980* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
981  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
982  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
983
984* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
985  length indicated.
986
987* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
988  was run.
989
990* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
991  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
992
993Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
994
995
996Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
997--------------------------------
998
999* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
1000  location or negative enclosed flux.
1001
1002* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
1003  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
1004  a full parameter file.
1005
1006* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
1007  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
1008
1009* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
1010
1011* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
1012  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
1013
1014* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
1015  functions, rather than a system call.
1016
1017* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
1018  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
1019  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
1020  improved the formatting a little.
1021
1022* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
1023  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
1024  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
1025  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
1026  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
1027  the cube anew.
1028
1029* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
1030
1031
1032
1033Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
1034--------------------------------
1035
1036First public release version.
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