Transfer learning for galaxy feature detection: Finding Giant Star-forming Clumps in low redshift galaxies using Faster R-CNN

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Popp, Jürgen, Dickinson, Hugh, Serjeant, Stephen, Walmsley, Mike, Adams, Dominic, Fortson, Lucy, Mantha, Kameswara, Mehta, Vihang, Dawson, James M., Kruk, Sandor, Simmons, Brooke
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Popp, Jürgen
Dickinson, Hugh
Serjeant, Stephen
Walmsley, Mike
Adams, Dominic
Fortson, Lucy
Mantha, Kameswara
Mehta, Vihang
Dawson, James M.
Kruk, Sandor
Simmons, Brooke
author_facet Popp, Jürgen
Dickinson, Hugh
Serjeant, Stephen
Walmsley, Mike
Adams, Dominic
Fortson, Lucy
Mantha, Kameswara
Mehta, Vihang
Dawson, James M.
Kruk, Sandor
Simmons, Brooke
contents Giant Star-forming Clumps (GSFCs) are areas of intensive star-formation that are commonly observed in high-redshift (z>1) galaxies but their formation and role in galaxy evolution remain unclear. High-resolution observations of low-redshift clumpy galaxy analogues are rare and restricted to a limited set of galaxies but the increasing availability of wide-field galaxy survey data makes the detection of large clumpy galaxy samples increasingly feasible. Deep Learning, and in particular CNNs, have been successfully applied to image classification tasks in astrophysical data analysis. However, one application of DL that remains relatively unexplored is that of automatically identifying and localising specific objects or features in astrophysical imaging data. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of using Deep learning-based object detection models to localise GSFCs in astrophysical imaging data. We apply the Faster R-CNN object detection framework (FRCNN) to identify GSFCs in low redshift (z<0.3) galaxies. Unlike other studies, we train different FRCNN models not on simulated images with known labels but on real observational data that was collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Legacy Survey and labelled by volunteers from the citizen science project `Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout'. The FRCNN model relies on a CNN component as a `backbone' feature extractor. We show that CNNs, that have been pre-trained for image classification using astrophysical images, outperform those that have been pre-trained on terrestrial images. In particular, we compare a domain-specific CNN -`Zoobot' - with a generic classification backbone and find that Zoobot achieves higher detection performance and also requires smaller training data sets to do so. Our final model is capable of producing GSFC detections with a completeness and purity of >=0.8 while only being trained on ~5,000 galaxy images.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_03503
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transfer learning for galaxy feature detection: Finding Giant Star-forming Clumps in low redshift galaxies using Faster R-CNN
Popp, Jürgen
Dickinson, Hugh
Serjeant, Stephen
Walmsley, Mike
Adams, Dominic
Fortson, Lucy
Mantha, Kameswara
Mehta, Vihang
Dawson, James M.
Kruk, Sandor
Simmons, Brooke
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Giant Star-forming Clumps (GSFCs) are areas of intensive star-formation that are commonly observed in high-redshift (z>1) galaxies but their formation and role in galaxy evolution remain unclear. High-resolution observations of low-redshift clumpy galaxy analogues are rare and restricted to a limited set of galaxies but the increasing availability of wide-field galaxy survey data makes the detection of large clumpy galaxy samples increasingly feasible. Deep Learning, and in particular CNNs, have been successfully applied to image classification tasks in astrophysical data analysis. However, one application of DL that remains relatively unexplored is that of automatically identifying and localising specific objects or features in astrophysical imaging data. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of using Deep learning-based object detection models to localise GSFCs in astrophysical imaging data. We apply the Faster R-CNN object detection framework (FRCNN) to identify GSFCs in low redshift (z<0.3) galaxies. Unlike other studies, we train different FRCNN models not on simulated images with known labels but on real observational data that was collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Legacy Survey and labelled by volunteers from the citizen science project `Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout'. The FRCNN model relies on a CNN component as a `backbone' feature extractor. We show that CNNs, that have been pre-trained for image classification using astrophysical images, outperform those that have been pre-trained on terrestrial images. In particular, we compare a domain-specific CNN -`Zoobot' - with a generic classification backbone and find that Zoobot achieves higher detection performance and also requires smaller training data sets to do so. Our final model is capable of producing GSFC detections with a completeness and purity of >=0.8 while only being trained on ~5,000 galaxy images.
title Transfer learning for galaxy feature detection: Finding Giant Star-forming Clumps in low redshift galaxies using Faster R-CNN
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.03503