Automatic Detection and Tracking of CMEs II: Multiscale Filtering of Coronagraph Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new automated method for detecting and tracking Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in coronagraph data, utilizing multiscale filtering and edge detection to improve accuracy and overcome limitations of previous catalogues.

Contribution

A novel CME detection and tracking technique that combines dynamic separation and multiscale edge detection, enhancing robustness and reducing user bias in coronagraph data analysis.

Findings

Effective detection of CMEs in SOHO and STEREO data

Improved CME kinematic and morphological characterization

Application to synthetic and real datasets demonstrates robustness

Abstract

Studying CMEs in coronagraph data can be challenging due to their diffuse structure and transient nature, and user-specific biases may be introduced through visual inspection of the images. The large amount of data available from the SOHO, STEREO, and future coronagraph missions, also makes manual cataloguing of CMEs tedious, and so a robust method of detection and analysis is required. This has led to the development of automated CME detection and cata- loguing packages such as CACTus, SEEDS and ARTEMIS. Here we present the development of a new CORIMP (coronal image processing) CME detection and tracking technique that overcomes many of the drawbacks of current catalogues. It works by first employing the dynamic CME separation technique outlined in a companion paper, and then characterising CME structure via a multiscale edge-detection algorithm. The detections are chained through time to determine the CME kinematics and morphological changes as it propagates across the plane-of-sky. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by its application to a selection of SOHO/LASCO and STEREO/SECCHI images, as well as to synthetic coronagraph images created from a model corona with a variety of CMEs. The algorithms described in this article are being applied to the whole LASCO and SECCHI datasets, and a catalogue of results will soon be available to the public.