source: trunk/CHANGES @ 941

Last change on this file since 941 was 941, checked in by MatthewWhiting, 12 years ago

Starting to list all the changes for this release...

File size: 42.6 KB
Line 
1Duchamp version 1.1.14 (2012/05/XX)
2-------------------------------------
3
4Bug fixes:
5
6* The absence of a BLANK keyword when trimming will now not trigger a
7  failure, only a warning message.
8
9* The flux unit conversion (eg. from Jy/beam to mJy/beam) was not
10  being applied correctly when an existing reconstructed or smoothed
11  array was being read in. This is now applied properly.
12
13* When saving reconstructed or smoothed arrays, the data type is now
14  set to FLOAT, so that the correct values are written (and
15  subsequently read in). The previous version was potentially saving
16  to a FITS file with integer data type (this depended on the type of
17  the input array), which potentially led to conversion errors.
18
19* For certain cases, the reconstruction attempted to use a very large
20  number of scales. This has been fixed.
21
22* When saving a mask image while using a subsection of a cube, the
23  offsets for the subsection were not being accounted for
24  correctly. This is now fixed.
25
26* The RA & Dec now have appropriate precision, rather than an
27  arbitrary 2 decimal places on the seconds value. The RA will be one
28  decimal place more than the Dec, and they will reflect the degree of
29  precision in the image pixels.
30
31* A number of data type conversions (typically ints to floats) led to
32  errors in some calculations, such as WCS conversions. Care has been
33  taken to make sure all indexing is done appropriately with no
34  overflow, and that all conversions (where necessary) are done
35  appropriately.
36
37* It was possible to get world positions looking like 11:59:60.0! Not
38  any more.
39
40New features:
41
42
43Code base development notes:
44
45
46
47Duchamp version 1.1.13 (2011/04/10)
48-------------------------------------
49
50Bug fixes:
51
52* The median statistics calculations had a bug in the test for whether
53  the array under consideration was of even size. The correction for
54  this can mean small differences in the resulting values. This can
55  flow through to calculated detection thresholds - please check this
56  with your data if you use this mode!
57
58* The reconstruction code had a bug where the incorrect number of
59  scales was being used. This occurred when the blank pixel flag was
60  set, and when the spectral dimension was smaller than both the
61  spatial dimensions.
62
63Other:
64
65* The default value of the blank pixel flag has been set to false,
66  rather than true. For Duchamp, this should not matter, as it is set
67  when the FITS file is read in. For external code using, for
68  instance, the reconstruction algorithms, this default may be
69  important. Having it true was contributing to the second bug listed
70  above. It also makes more sense for it to be false unless explicitly
71  set in some way.
72
73* The reconstruction code has been streamlined a little, reducing its
74  memory impact and using more appropriate variable types
75  (eg. unsigned ints instead of ints and so forth).
76
77* For those who care about the actual code base, the statistics
78  functions have been expanded, and separated from getStats.cc into
79  "normal" and "robust" versions.
80
81
82Duchamp version 1.1.12 (2011/03/18)
83-------------------------------------
84
85Bug fixes:
86
87* The velocity width calculations had a bug that occasionally led to
88  very large values. The widths are calculated using the integrated
89  spectrum, using a threshold relative to its peak. In v.1.1.10 and
90  1.1.11, however, the peak was searched for over the entire spectral
91  range, rather than just the range for the current object. This led
92  to spurious values. This has been fixed, so that the peak is only
93  searched for within the detected ranage of the object.
94
95* Both the pixel and statistics subsections are now more carefully
96  examined, with errors reported if there are no valid pixels in the
97  pixel subsection, or if the statistics subsection does not intersect
98  with the pixel subsection.
99
100Other:
101
102* The configure script has been slightly improved so that the pgsbox
103  library is only added if PGPlot has been enabled - this is
104  particularly necessary with the slightly changed build procedure for
105  recent wcslib versions.
106
107* In a related note, one file - momentMap.cc - had some #include
108  statements that failed when PGPlot (and hence pgsbox in WCSLIB) was
109  not enabled. These were actually unnecesssary and have been removed.
110
111* There is a new input parameter - flagPlotSpectra - that allows the
112  user to turn off the production of the spectral plots. It defaults
113  to true (meaning the plots are produced).
114
115
116Duchamp version 1.1.11 (2011/03/01)
117-------------------------------------
118
119Improvements:
120
121* The largest changes in this release involved improving the
122  efficiency of the code, resulting in further speed-ups. The code
123  affected was the low-level object-handling code, with the merging
124  stages in particular showing good speed-ups.
125
126* The default value for the beam size, when the beam parameters are
127  not in the FITS header, has been dropped. Now the default behaviour
128  is to simply not make any beam corrections if the beam is not
129  specified by either the FITS file or the input parameters. Thanks to
130  Tobias Westemeier for the suggestion.
131
132* The reporting of the beam size has changed slightly to provide a bit
133  more information.
134
135Bug Fixes:
136
137* The statistics section (statSec) could be larger than the image
138  subsection (if provided), yet the pixels required would never be
139  read in from the FITS file. The behaviour has been changed so that
140  the statSec, if requested, is trimmed to be wholly within the image
141  section.
142
143* It was possible to request, for instance, spectral smoothing on a 2D
144  image. This resulted in a blank smoothed array, which led to
145  problems in the calculations of statistics (and hence the
146  threshold), as well as subsequent calculations. This has been fixed,
147  so that in cases like this the smoothing is turned off (and a
148  warning message is displayed).
149
150* There was a problem with using a MW range and subsectioning when
151  growing objects, as a result of changes in 1.1.10. This has been
152  fixed.
153
154* Inversion was failing when no array was allocated (not a problem for
155  standard Duchamp, but affected its use as a library by other code).
156
157* Writing text spectra would only occur when PGPlot output was enabled
158  in the build (it was combined with the plotting of the spectral
159  graphs). This has been changed so that this output can be requested
160  without requiring PGPlot.
161
162* The equation for the beam size in Sec.4.2 of the User Guide was
163  incorrect and has been fixed.
164
165* Minor change to the configure script to improve the detection of the
166  PGPlot library.
167
168Code development notes:
169
170* The main work has been additions and improvements to the interfaces
171  for the Param and the Section classes, as well as new classes to
172  manage the beam information. The efficiency changes mentioned above
173  also affected the internals of some of the PixelInfo classes, and
174  provided additional functions for judging the closeness of
175  neighbouring objects.
176
177Duchamp version 1.1.10 (2010/11/15)
178-------------------------------------
179
180Improvements:
181
182* The major change for this release is a greatly improved growing
183  algorithm. The previous incarnation was very inefficient (testing
184  all pixels in an object, most of which only have neighbours that are
185  already in the object), and could take an unnecessarily large amount
186  of time in the case of extended sources. The improved algorithm
187  makes use of voxel flags to quickly identify those voxels not yet in
188  an object and only examines them. For a certain test case
189  (observations of extended Galactic HI), the time required reduced
190  from about a day to about a minute! (Note that compact sources, such
191  as HI galaxies, will not show this degree of speedup...) Many thanks
192  to Tara Murphy for pointing out this bug and her help in
193  diagnosing/fixing the problem.
194
195* There have been a number of further improvements to the code to
196  speed it up, based on some profiling. The most important was the
197  function to add pixels to a 2D object, but there were several other
198  minor changes as well.
199
200* The minimum size of the detections can now also be specified in
201  terms of the total number of voxels (in addition or instead of
202  specifying the minimum spatial pixels or channels).
203
204* The way memory is allocated when reading the image has been
205  streamlined. The amount of memory being allocated is also now
206  reported - this is in an effort to allow users to identify problems
207  with running out of memory.
208
209* The version number is now reported in the results and log files.
210
211* Only the filename of the input image (ie. not the leading
212  directories) is now shown on the detection and moment-0 maps. This
213  is to avoid problems with large directory paths being too wide for
214  the plot.
215
216* The verification script was improved for readability (although no
217  functional change was made).
218
219Bug fixes:
220
221* Growing was not being done when a single source was found. Now
222  fixed.
223
224* For particular WCS setups, the RA can be interpreted as being
225  negative, which corrupted the Source ID (ie. the IAU-format
226  string). This has been fixed.
227
228* When the flux units were changed, problems had been seen when
229  writing a reconstructed cube to a FITS file. Any unit change is now
230  undone prior to writing and there should now be no problem.
231
232* Filenames with spaces in them were not handled well. New functions
233  were included and moved to a more obvious location. These filenames
234  now work as expected.
235
236* Spectral axes of type FREQ that had a rest frequency were not being
237  put into velocity units. Now fixed.
238
239* Improvements to the output to screen, making sure everything is
240  covered by the verbose flag.
241
242* Better management of the allocation of arrays.
243
244* The minSize parameter in Image was never initialised, leading to
245  unpredictable behaviour. Now fixed.
246
247Code development notes:
248
249* New functionality includes: a function to return a vector list of
250  voxels in an Object3D or Detection; a new generic Search function
251  (basically a front-end to each of the individual functions); more
252  complete copy constructors for the DataArray classes; new methods
253  for finding the velocity widths.
254
255Duchamp version 1.1.9 (2010/03/26)
256-------------------------------------
257
258Improvements:
259
260* There is now the ability to save the moment-0 map as a FITS
261  file. This is controlled by the parameters flagOutputMomentMap and
262  fileOutputMomentMap, which work in the same way for the mask file.
263
264* There is a new parameter flagRejectBeforeMerge that, when true,
265  rejects sources according to the minPix/minChannels requirements
266  before the merging and growing is done. This defaults to false (so
267  default behaviour is as before). Thanks to Tobias Westmeier for
268  suggesting this and the above improvement.
269
270* There is also a new parameter flagTwoStageMerging. When true (the
271  default), newly-detected objects are merged with the first close
272  object in the list. When false, they are simply added to the end of
273  the list. In both cases, a second round of merging is done to pick
274  up all close matches.
275
276* The way the beam is specified in the absence of the BMAJ/BMIN/BPA
277  parameters has been slightly changed. The use of "beamSize" was
278  somewhat ambiguous (it meant the number of pixels covered by the
279  beam, not the FWHM), so new parameters have been introduced. The
280  beam can be specified by beamArea (which replaces beamSize), or
281  beamFWHM (the FWHM of the beam in pixels). If beamFWHM is provided,
282  it will be used, else the beamArea will be.
283
284* There is a new parameter searchType that allows the user to choose
285  how the searching is done. The behaviour up till now has been to
286  search the 2D channel maps one at a time to build up the 3D
287  detections. This is the default, and can be obtained by setting
288  searchType=spatial. Alternatively, you can set searchType=spectral
289  to do the searching in the 1D spectra.
290
291* Profiling of the code has led to a few changes that have sped up
292  some calculations, particularly those involving the median. Rather
293  than using std::sort, the code now simply uses std::nth_element,
294  which shows a substantial speedup factor.
295
296* When using the objectList parameter, the maps will now only show the
297  selected objects, rather than all detected objects.
298
299* There is a new verification test that looks at the "growing"
300  functionality.
301
302Bug fixes:
303
304* When saving a mask FITS file, there was an occasional memory leak
305  that caused Duchamp to crash (only when the cube was suitably
306  large). This has been fixed.
307
308* The median calculation had a bug that led to an incorrect value
309  being reported. The difference will not be great (the element of an
310  array being reported as the median was out by one), but could be
311  noticeable depending on the dataset.
312
313* The MW range parameters did not respond to the use of a
314  subsection. They should refer to channel ranges in the original
315  cube, and changes have been made to the code to reflect this.
316
317* There was an occasional error in writing out FITS keywords, due to
318  the way comment strings were intialised. This has been improved and
319  made more robust.
320
321* Testing with gcc-4.3.2 showed a number of compilation warnings &
322  errors, which have been fixed.
323
324* The Gaussian smoothing kernel was too small - it is now made big
325  enough to encompass all possible values. It was also being
326  incorrectly scaled. This had no functional effect on the detection
327  of objects, but for other uses was incorrect. This has been
328  rectified.
329
330* Some outputs that weren't caught by the verbose flag now are.
331
332
333Code development notes:
334
335  The following notes only apply if you want to use the code as a
336  library, rather than the stand-alone package. These have generally
337  come out of the ASKAP software development. If you just use the
338  stand-alone package, they won't be a concern.
339
340* The API for storing detected objects has changed, making it more
341  robust from a programming point of view.
342
343* Additional versions of some functions (and the Gaussian smoothing
344  class) have been added - this has come out of the ASKAP development
345  work.
346
347* A number of instances of "unsigned int" being used for loops have
348  been changed to iterators or "size_t". There shouldn't be any
349  functional change from this -- the code should just build more
350  cleanly.
351
352* The Detection class now records whether the parameters have been
353  set, and unsets that flag when objects are merged. This allows
354  external programs to track which objects have been merged and deal
355  with them appropriately.
356
357
358Duchamp version 1.1.8 (2009/07/20)
359----------------------------------
360
361Improvements:
362
363* The final source list can now be sorted on one of a range of object
364  parameters: x-value, y-value, z-value, ra, dec, vel, w50, iflux,
365  pflux (integrated and peak flux respectively), or snr. Simply use
366  the new input parameter sortingParam. Its default value is vel, so
367  the default behaviour stays the same.
368
369* The FDR method involves calculating how many pixels are
370  correlated. This previously involved multiplying the beam area by 2,
371  implying that 2 neighbouring channels were correlated. This factor
372  is now a user-selectable parameter, so that if you know how many
373  spectral channels should be correlated, you can set the parameter
374  FDRnumCorChan and the FDR calculation will be done correctly.
375
376* Screen output now has more information on the growing threshold when
377  the cube statistics are printed.
378
379
380Bug fixes:
381
382* When reading in previous detections, there was a bug causing a
383  segmentation fault. This has been fixed and made more robust.
384
385* There was an apparent bug when writing out the reconstructed cubes
386  to a FITS file that caused the new file to be very large. Changing
387  the cfitsio function used has fixed this.
388
389* Using NCP projections near the equator could result in a large
390  stream of error messages, due to coordinate transformations being
391  done in blank regions outside of the acceptable range of world
392  coordinates. This has been fixed.
393
394* The function that grows objects had a major bug, that stopped it
395  working when flagAdjacent=false. This has been fixed and should work
396  fine.
397
398* The input parameter spectraTextFile was not being read
399  properly. This has been remedied.
400
401* The units for the integrated flux were wrong for some types of pixel
402  flux units. This has been fixed.
403
404* A minor bug caused incorrect calculation of the 20% widths.
405
406* All calls to uint were changed to unsigned int, as some compilers
407  had problems recognising that they were the same thing.
408
409* src/fitsHeader.cc was missing an include statement for stdlib.h,
410  again causing some compilers to fail.
411
412
413Duchamp version 1.1.7 (2009/01/16)
414----------------------------------
415
416Improvements:
417
418* The mask file that can be created with flagMask can now specify
419  which object a given detected pixel belongs to, by taking the object
420  ID as its value. This applies if you set flagMaskWithObjectNum=true
421  (it defaults to false, which means each detected pixel has the value
422  1). Non-detected pixels still have the value 0.
423
424* The names of the output FITS files are now able to be specified
425  directly by input parameters. These will override the default names
426  that Duchamp provides.
427
428* The Karma annotation file now specifies a font - previously it did
429  not and so was at the mercy of whatever was specified in other
430  annotation files being viewed at the same time. Please let me know
431  if the font I've chosen (lucidasans-12) is not suitable.
432
433* The default flag, used in the absence of 'E', 'S' or 'N', is now '-'
434  rather than blank. This will ensure that each column in the results
435  file has something in it.
436
437* The configure script is somewhat more robust to non-standard
438  systems, particularly when the X11 libraries are in unusual
439  places. It can also deal with the slightly different way that
440  wcslib-4.3 installs itself.
441
442* The installation part of the Makefile was altered so that the
443  symbolic link Duchamp that points to Duchamp-1.1.7 does not have the
444  absolute path encoded in it. This will enable the files to be moved
445  around at a later date.
446
447Bug Fixes:
448
449* Fixed a bug that caused problems when the flux units were less than
450  5 characters long (e.g. 'K')
451
452* The new velocity width values were not getting proper headers in the
453  VOTable output. This has been remedied.
454
455* Minor improvements to help non-pgplot use
456
457* Minor fix in WCS functionality.
458
459* Minor fixes to the FitsHeader class.
460
461* Improved FITS data reading, that doesn't require a nullarray
462  array. This will reduce memory usage.
463
464* Improved subsection parsing, particularly for non-standard WCS
465  systems.
466
467* Improving the memory allocation of the Cube class.
468
469* Fixed a bug that meant the growthThreshold values were sometimes
470  being lost.
471
472* Improving the way the growing and merging is done, particularly in
473  the case of non-adjacent merging.
474
475* Fixed a scaling bug in the GaussSmooth function.
476
477Other:
478
479* Numerous changes to the code that do not affect how Duchamp itself
480  runs, but were necessary for code development with the Duchamp
481  libraries (primarily as a part of the ASKAP code development).
482
483
484Duchamp version 1.1.6 (2008/09/08)
485----------------------------------
486
487New features:
488
489* The velocity widths can now be quoted in two additional ways: the
490  full width at 50% of the peak flux (ie. the FWHM) and the full width
491  at 20% of the peak flux (w_50 and w_20 respectively). The w_50
492  parameter is now quoted in the results printed to the screen
493  (instead of w_VEL), but all three are written to the results file.
494
495* The facility now exists to bypass the searching step and go straight
496  to the output stage using a list of previously detected objects. The
497  list is extracted from a previously-created log file. The user can
498  change the way the spectra are plotted (e.g. choose to plot
499  integrated rather than peak spectra), and select a subset of the
500  detected objects to be printed to individual postscript files. Use
501  the input parameter usePrevious (set to true) to use this facility,
502  and provide a list of objects using the objectList parameter
503  (eg. 1,2,4,7-10,15)
504
505* A new parameter "growthThreshold" has been created, that goes with
506  "threshold". If you manually specify a threshold, and you wish to
507  grow detections, you need to manually specify a growthThreshold (in
508  flux units).
509
510Bug fixes:
511
512* Cubes that do not have a spectral axis (such as Stokes cubes) were
513  causing memory leaks and crashing, due to some assumptions of the
514  existence of the spectral axis. These bugs have been fixed, so that
515  Duchamp will run on such cubes, although the WCS transforms may not
516  always work appropriately. Please let me know via bug reports of
517  difficulties you encounter!
518
519* The growing function has had a few bugs fixed and is now more
520  efficient.
521
522* The FDR method was previously overriding any manually-specified
523  threshold. This has been fixed so that if the user specifies
524  threshold=X, then the FDR method is not called.
525
526* Some undefined things were happening with textual output when no
527  objects were detected. This has been fixed.
528
529* Memory leaks caused by FITS WCS irregularities have been fixed
530  (specifically, if a FITS header had NAXIS=2 but more than two WCS
531  axes were defined).
532
533
534
535Duchamp version 1.1.5 (2008/03/20)
536----------------------------------
537
538Bug fixes:
539* A major bug was discovered in the calculation of integrated
540  fluxes. The flux was incorrectly being weighted by the spatial size
541  of the detection, resulting in a (often considerable) overestimation
542  of the integrated flux. This has been corrected.
543
544* The beam size calculation was also incorrect, being out by a factor
545  of 1/ln(2).
546
547* The "make install" command previously failed to work properly if the
548  library had not been created. This has been fixed so that the
549  installation works even if there is no library file.
550
551New Features:
552* You can now provide a new flux unit string, so that the pixel fluxes
553  will be converted to these new fluxes before any calculations are
554  done. This is done with the newFluxUnits input parameter. The new
555  units should be directly convertible from the old ones (given by the
556  BUNIT header -- e.g. if BUNIT = Jy/beam, you can give newFluxUnits
557  as mJy/beam, but not mJy).
558
559* You can now specify the precision used in the output files for flux,
560  velocity and S/N ratio columns, via new input parameters precFlux,
561  precVel and precSNR. These will apply to the VOTable output as well
562  as the text table and information on the spectral plots.
563
564* The Karma annotation files previously provided just a circle at the
565  spatial location of the detected object. You now have the option to
566  draw a border around the detected pixels (in a similar manner to the
567  PGPLOT moment maps). Karma does not do this perfectly, so the lines
568  may not line up exactly with the pixel borders, so the option
569  remains to keep using the circles. This is controlled by the
570  parameter "annotationType", with possible options being "borders"
571  (the default) or "circles".
572
573* There is a new function getMetadata() that loads the header and WCS
574  data, but no pixel information. This is only of interest if you are
575  doing code development with the Duchamp library -- it does not
576  affect the running of Duchamp itself.
577
578Duchamp version 1.1.4 (2008/02/15)
579----------------------------------
580
581Most of the changes incorporated in this update result from ASKAP code
582development (that makes use of some of the Duchamp functionality),
583but do not actually affect the way Duchamp runs (other than, in a
584couple of cases, making it a bit faster). Changes that are
585relevant for regular users of Duchamp are as follows:
586
587* A new option has been made available (thanks to Mary Putman et al
588  for the suggestion!) to save the spectra of all detected objects in
589  a text file. This has the form of one column for the spectral
590  coordinates and one column of fluxes for each object. This is
591  enabled by the input parameters flagTextSpectra and spectraTextFile.
592
593* Slight changes to the output include he formatting of the way the
594  detected objects are written to the log file. This meant the
595  verification files were also updated. Also the cube statistics are
596  not printed to the results file if a user threshold is specified (as
597  they are not calculated!).
598
599* The determination of beam size has been made more reliable, as has
600  the BUNIT determination.
601
602* Fixed a bug that meant source merging was not done for 2D images
603  (not usually a problem, as the source-finding takes care of this,
604  but came up in parallelisation development).
605
606Duchamp version 1.1.3 (2008/01/08)
607----------------------------------
608
609A minor update that just improves the build process. The location of
610the wcslib include files was not specified correctly, so that some
611machines were unable to find them. The configure script has been fixed
612so that the compilation should work in all cases.
613
614Some minor changes have also been made to the code in the PixelMap
615directory, and to param.cc, to fix warnings or errors that may appear
616in compilation.
617
618However, there are no changes to the actual workings of the code in
619this minor version, so if you have a working version of Duchamp 1.1.2
620there is probably no reason to update.
621
622Duchamp version 1.1.2 (2007/12/07)
623----------------------------------
624
625Compilation:
626
627* The compilation had problems working correctly when the cfitsio and
628  wcs libraries were not in standard locations. The configure script
629  has been tweaked to make sure the libraries are found.
630
631* Problems with compiling in the absence of pgplot have been fixed,
632  and it should now compile fine.
633
634* Improved the configure script for use with Mac OS X and gfortran.
635
636
637Bugfixing:
638
639* A major problem with the text-based output was fixed. The widths of
640  the columns were not being calculated correctly, and were running
641  together. This should no longer be the case.
642
643* There was a bug in the way Duchamp interpreted spectral axes,
644  particularly AIPS types such as FELO-HEL, leading to incorrect
645  scaling of the velocity axis. This has been fixed, so that
646  non-standard types are now dealt with appropriately and the velocity
647  scaling should be accurate.
648
649* Another bug meant the beam correction was always applied to the
650  integrated spectra, regardless of whether the flux units involved
651  the beam (e.g. Jy/beam). This has been fixed. Note that the values
652  of the integrated flux presented in the results table were always
653  calculated correctly.
654
655* Other minor changes to improve the speed and efficiency, especially
656  of the merging code.
657
658New user parameters:
659
660* There is now the possibility to save a FITS file that contains a
661  mask array, indicating where the detected objects are. This is
662  governed by the flagOutputMask parameter.
663
664* The header information that is printed at the start of the results
665  file -- that is, the list of parameters, the statistics of the cube,
666  and the number of detections -- can now be written to a separate
667  file. Set the flagSeparateHeader parameter to true or 1 and it will
668  go to the file indicated by the headerFile parameter (the default is
669  duchamp-Results.hdr).
670
671* A "scaleMax" parameter has been added, so that the wavelet
672  reconstruction can include only a specified range of scales (for
673  instance, if one wants to search just for narrow features such as
674  absorption lines).
675
676* A "flagRobustStats" parameter has been added. This allows the user
677  to elect to use robust statistics (median and median absolute
678  deviation from the median) to estimate the noise parameters. If set
679  to false, the mean and standard deviation will be used. The default
680  value is true.
681
682New Feature:
683
684* When Duchamp is run on a 2D image (i.e. with no spectral output), it
685  now produces a postscript file that shows information each
686  individual source plus the image cutout of the source. This is
687  similar to the spectral output file, but without the spectra. The
688  filename is given by the spectraFile parameter.
689
690* Ability to save a FITS file containing a mask array, with pixel
691  values of 1 for pixels in a detected object, and 0 elsewhere.
692
693
694Duchamp version 1.1.1 (2007/07/20)
695------------------------------------
696
697Minor update to the release, with just a few changes:
698
699* The verification script was generating diffs due to differences in
700  the precision of some calculations when done on different machines.
701  One of these was the integrated flux, and this has been corrected so
702  that the same value should appear on all machines.
703  The verification script has also changed so that just the number of
704  sources and their positions are tested, as well as the
705  logfiles. This should avoid the reporting of spurious differences.
706
707* The grey-scale used in the image cutouts (in the spectral plots) has
708  been inverted. This makes it consistent with the scale used in the
709  maps, and hopefully easier to see when printing.
710
711* The configure/make system has been altered to make it easier to
712  install, and to specify different external libraries. In particular,
713  it is now not necessary to have PGPLOT installed on your system to
714  run Duchamp. In the absence of PGPLOT, Duchamp will run as normal,
715  just without any graphical output. Some source code needed to be
716  restructured to make this work. Please read the README file, or the
717  Installation appendix in the User's Guide, for complete details.
718
719* The time of completion is now written to the log file, so that the
720  user can have some idea of how long the program took.
721
722
723Duchamp version 1.1 (2007/05/17)
724------------------------------------
725
726Changes made since the last numbered release:
727
728EFFICIENCY OF EXECUTION:
729
730* Major change to the way detections are stored. They are now recorded
731  via run-length encoding in the x-y plane, and stored as collections
732  of channel-maps. This improves the memory usage and the speed of
733  execution (particularly for routines such as the merging
734  routines). The memory usage has also been improved by changing the
735  way the list of detected objects is stored.
736
737SMOOTHING:
738
739* Addition of ability to spatially smooth the cube before
740  searching. This is done with a Gaussian kernel, the size and shape
741  of which can be specified by the user, using the parameters kernMaj
742  & kernMin (which are the FWHM for the major & minor axes -- if
743  kernMin is not given it is assumed to match kernMaj) and kernPA (the
744  position angle of the major axis).  There is a new parameter
745  smoothType that distinguishes this method from the spectral (Hanning)
746  smoothing already in use.
747
748DETECTIONS:
749
750* Changed the way detection is done -- now only search in 2D images,
751  keeping all detections (ie. no minimum-pixel requirement). This
752  should be the same as doing both the 1D and 2D searches with the
753  minimum pixel requirement in, but simpler. The rejection is done at
754  the end after all the merging and growing has been done. This leads
755  to a larger number of intermediate detections (ie.  the number
756  before merging), which may increase the run-time slightly, although
757  this is offset by the changes to the efficiency (see above).
758
759* Increased the range over which objects can be grown to match the
760  threshSpatial & threshVelocity parameters, as well as rejecting new
761  pixels based on the BLANK and MW tests.
762
763INPUTS:
764
765* There has been a subtle change in the way BLANK pixels are dealt
766  with. To enable trimming of BLANK pixels, users should use the new
767  parameter flagTrim. The parameters flagBlankPix and blankPixVal are
768  no longer accessible via the parameter file -- warning messages are
769  given if they are provided in the parameter file.
770
771* Added ability to specify a statsec, so that the statistics are only
772  calculated from a given subsection of the cube, rather than the full
773  cube.
774
775* The subsections can also specify the ability to remove a border of n
776  pixels from the edges of an axis (ie. n from the start and from the
777  end) -- as requested in Trac ticket #5.
778
779* Changed the default value of the reconDim parameter from 3 to 1, and
780  the default value of the flagATrous parameter to false.
781
782OUTPUTS:
783
784* The output now includes three different estimates of the "centre" of
785  the detection: peak location, centroid (flux-weighted), or average.
786
787* Some slight improvements to the user feedback during execution.
788
789* Spectral output now includes the baseline, if one was fitted. The
790  format of the plot headers is slightly changed, to stop information
791  falling off the edge of the page.
792
793* Added command-line option -x to directly disable the PGPLOT X-window
794  map plotting. This overrides the setting of flagXOutput in the
795  parameter file.
796
797* Fallback spectral units (in case the FITS header fails to record
798  them) changed to SPC, but code has been fixed so that any problem
799  should be caught before this becomes an issue.
800
801BUGFIXES:
802
803* Fixed bug (Trac ticket #4) that meant the velocity units were not
804  correctly dealt with. Duchamp should be more robust for different
805  velocity axis setups now.
806
807* Fixed bug (ticket #9) with the VOTable output, where the tags were
808  not closing.
809
810* Fixed a bug that meant the integrated fluxes were not calculated
811  properly -- no allowance was made for the number of spatial
812  pixels. This should also work properly for 2D images now as well.
813
814* Fixed minor bug in calculating the flux threshold from the p-value
815  threshold when the FDR method is used. This did not affect the
816  actual thresholding, merely the quoted flux threshold in the results
817  file. Also, the MW channels are kept out of the p-value threshold
818  determination if they are being flagged.
819
820
821
822Duchamp version 1.0.7 (2006/11/22)
823----------------------------------
824
825One new feature, and some improvements and bug-fixes.
826
827* The user can now elect to Hanning-smooth the spectral direction of
828  the cube before the searching is done. This can be done instead of the
829  wavelet reconstruction (although if both are selected, the
830  reconstruction takes precendence). This functionality is switched on
831  and off by the flagSmooth parameter, and the width of the Hanning
832  kernel is governed by the hanningWidth parameter.
833
834* The smoothed array can also be written to a FITS file and read in at
835  the start in the same manner as the reconstructed array.
836
837* Several improvements have been made to the memory
838  management. Several memory leaks were fixed, and the memory usage of
839  Duchamp is considerably less, which will be a help for running it on
840  large cubes. The speed of some routines has also been improved, by
841  removing unnecessarily repetitive loops.
842
843* The sorting routines have been changed, and should now be slightly quicker
844  (and a bit more robust).
845
846* Enabled the scale bar (plotted on the 0th moment map in the spectral
847  output file) to be able to deal with much finer spatial scales (as
848  may be expected from VLBI data).
849
850* Other minor changes to code and presentation.
851
852
853Duchamp version 1.0.6 (2006/11/01)
854----------------------------------
855
856Some incremental improvements and changes to the code:
857
858* The statistics used for the detection are now calculated once for
859  the entire cube, rather than being calculated separately for each
860  channel map and spectrum. This results in a uniform threshold value
861  across the entire cube. The way the statistics calculations are
862  implemented in the code was changed, using a new statistics class.
863
864* This means we can report a peak signal-to-noise value for each
865  detection. This is given in the text-based output, as well as in the
866  summary information above the spectral output for each source.
867
868* The user can now elect not to have the moment map displayed in a
869  PGPlot window, through the use of the new flagXOutput
870  parameter. This should help in cases of running Duchamp on a dumb
871  terminal (with no X-display capabilities), or as part of a batch
872  script where the continual popping-up of the PGPlot window might
873  become annoying.
874
875* There are different Flags reported for the case of an object lying on
876  the spatial edge and spectral edge of the cube (E and S respectively).
877
878* A few minor bug fixes:
879  - When providing a subsection, any axes with the range given by *
880    had the pixel values offset incorrectly. This has been fixed.
881  - Negative searches now correctly invert the reconstructed array
882    when it is read in from a file.
883
884* Other minor changes to the code, to improve memory handling and
885  remove redundant arrays and variables.
886
887
888Duchamp version 1.0.5 (2006/09/06)
889----------------------------------
890
891Since version 1.0, there have been a range of mostly minor
892changes. These are generally bug-fixes, thanks to feedback from a
893number of users, as well as a few extra features.
894
895Here is a summary of the changes since version 1.0:
896
897USER INTERFACE:
898
899* The user is now able to enter the value of flag parameters in the
900  parameter file as strings, as well as integers (so one can enter
901  true or 1 to give the same result).
902
903GRAPHICAL OUTPUT:
904
905* Added a new function that draws the edge of the blank region on the
906  maps and image cutouts. There is a new flag parameter --
907  drawBlankEdges -- that controls the use of this function (the
908  default is true).
909  Also, the edge of the field is plotted on the image cutouts as a
910  yellow line. This distinguishes it from the purple blank pixel
911  dividing line.
912
913* The size of the tick mark in the image cutout (indicating the
914  spatial scale of the image) is now adaptable, so that it shows the
915  scale that best fits the image (ranging from 1 arcsec to 15
916  degrees). (This is a change from the previous standard length of 15
917  arcmin.)
918
919* The zoomed spectrum had its flux scale determined by all points in
920  the zoom box,including those flagged by the Milky Way (MW)
921  range. This has been fixed so that any MW channels will not affect
922  the flux scaling, potentially improving the appearance of objects
923  detected close in velocity to strong MW emission or absorption.
924
925* Improved Karma Annotation file output, so that files without good
926  WCS are dealt with appropriately.
927
928TEXT-BASED OUTPUT:
929
930* The position resolution in the IAU-format names has been increased,
931  so that distinct objects close to one another are more readily
932  distinguished.  Overlapping sources at different velocities may
933  still have the same name, but this is a more general problem.
934
935* The presentation of the results in tabular format has been improved,
936  so that the precision of faint sources is sufficient to show their
937  flux, for instance, is not 0. This also applies to the information
938  presented above the spectral plots.
939
940* Improved error and warning reporting, so that the formatting and
941  presentation of information is clearer.
942
943FITS I/O RELATED:
944
945* The previous version was did not deal well with 4 (or greater)
946  dimensions in the FITS file -- the memory allocation was badly done,
947  and the axes needed to be in a particular order. This has been
948  fixed, so that the FITS I/O routines can now handle any sized FITS
949  file, with axes in any order (as long as there are two spatial and one
950  spectral axes).
951
952* When the FITS file does not have a rest frequency defined, there is
953  no way to transform the frequency axis into velocity. In this case,
954  the spectral axis is left as frequency, and put into units of MHz.
955
956* If the beam size is not indicated by the FITS header (through the
957  BMAJ and BMIN keywords), the user can manually specify the size
958  through the parameter file (using parameter beamSize).
959
960* The FITS I/O routines make use of the command fits_file_exists. This
961  was introduced into the CFITSIO package from version 2.5, so Duchamp
962  will only work with this version or higher. Version 3+ is preferred.
963
964OTHER BUG-FIXING:
965
966* Several bugs related to the blank-pixels were dealt with.
967  The correct values were not propagating through correctly, meaning
968  that the default values were being used. Also, there was the
969  potential for blank pixels to be detected when the FDR method was
970  used. Finally, the image cutout displays occasionally did not
971  obscure the blank pixels. All these problems should be fixed now.
972
973* The FDR setup routine was occasionally failing with a segmentation
974  fault, due to it accessing unallocated memory. This has been fixed.
975
976* Fixed bugs that affected the way 2D images (rather than 3D cubes)
977  were dealt with. The minChannels test failed when minChannels=0.
978
979* If there is no beam information in the FITS header, the user can now
980  enter a beam size as a parameter.
981
982* Other minor fixes to the code, to improve its structure and
983  robustness.
984
985
986Duchamp version 1.0 (2006/06/30)
987--------------------------------
988
989The first full release version.
990
991Several major changes compared to previous version:
992
993* Incorporated a FitsHeader class, to keep track of header information
994  (including WCS) from the FITS file. All units-related calculations
995  are done with this class, such as conversion to velocity, and
996  pixel-to-WCS conversion.  The main advantage of this is improved
997  speed of execution, more adaptable to different units, and improved
998  code (easier for me!).
999
1000* Able to select the dimensionality of the reconstruction, rather than
1001  just doing it in 3-D.
1002
1003* Robust text output, so that the columns are sized correctly given
1004  the data being written, and the relevant units (derived from the
1005  FITS header) are included in the output table.
1006
1007* Improved the way the reconstructed image is saved and read back in,
1008  with a better naming scheme and a better set of new FITS header
1009  keywords. The MW headers are now not written.
1010
1011Other, more minor changes include:
1012
1013* MW channels now not set to 0, but just ignored for searching
1014  purposes (and for the scaling of the spectral output -- they are
1015  plotted though and highlighted with a hashed box).
1016
1017* The scale bar in the moment map in the spectral output file has its
1018  length indicated.
1019
1020* Improved VOTable output, with more information about the way Duchamp
1021  was run.
1022
1023* Made sure all statistics calculations in the reconstruction are
1024  based on robust (ie. median) methods.
1025
1026Also moved to an autoconf based configure/make compilation, for ease of use.
1027
1028
1029Duchamp version 0.9.2 (2006/06/27)
1030--------------------------------
1031
1032* Added the use of warning flags for detections: for either edge
1033  location or negative enclosed flux.
1034
1035* A new command line option added so that the user can specify a FITS
1036  file to be searched with the default parameters, rather than giving
1037  a full parameter file.
1038
1039* The scale bar on the moment cutout now works in general case, using
1040  an iterative process to get to the correct length.
1041
1042* RA axes are now done correctly on the full-scale maps.
1043
1044* Various coding fixes, improving the readability of the code,
1045  particularly regarding the declaration of temporary variables.
1046
1047* Changed the way the time of execution is called : now using time.h
1048  functions, rather than a system call.
1049
1050* Changed output in Detection/outputDetection.cc for the pixel
1051  information of detected objects (the info printed above the spectral
1052  plots) -- now print out number of voxels in object, and have
1053  improved the formatting a little.
1054
1055* Improved the functionality of saving the FITS file containing the
1056  reconstructed array. Added ability to save and read back in the MW
1057  parameters when saving a reconstructed cube (if a reconstructed cube
1058  has different MW range to that being considered, it would cause
1059  problems). ReadRecon now just returns a FAILURE and will reconstruct
1060  the cube anew.
1061
1062* Changed default value of flagGrowth to 0.
1063
1064
1065
1066Duchamp version 0.9 (2006/05/05)
1067--------------------------------
1068
1069First public release version.
Note: See TracBrowser for help on using the repository browser.