The 2012 Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest

TL;DR

This paper reports the results of the fifth Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest, comparing various algorithms' ability to reconstruct images from interferometric data of astronomical objects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of different interferometric imaging algorithms on blind test data, highlighting their strengths and limitations.

Findings

Different algorithms show varying reconstruction quality.

Some methods excel in specific scenarios.

The contest offers benchmarks for future development.

Abstract

We present the results of the fifth Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest. The contest consists in blind imaging of test data sets derived from model sources and distributed in the OIFITS format. Two scenarios of imaging with CHARA/MIRC-6T were offered for reconstruction: imaging a T Tauri disc and imaging a spotted red supergiant. There were eight different teams competing this time: Monnier with the software package MACIM; Hofmann, Schertl and Weigelt with IRS; Thi\'ebaut and Soulez with MiRA ; Young with BSMEM; Mary and Vannier with MIROIRS; Millour and Vannier with independent BSMEM and MiRA entries; Rengaswamy with an original method; and Elias with the radio-astronomy package CASA. The contest model images, the data delivered to the contestants and the rules are described as well as the results of the image reconstruction obtained by each method. These results are discussed as well as the strengths and limitations of each algorithm.