A Prototype Data Format for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: Regions Of Interest (ROI)

TL;DR

The paper introduces a prototype ROI data format for CTA camera images that efficiently stores relevant pixels near the shower, reducing data volume and background noise, with promising preliminary simulation results.

Contribution

It presents a novel ROI file format prototype that selectively stores relevant camera pixels, addressing CTA's large data volume challenge.

Findings

ROI format effectively reduces data size

Preliminary simulations show promising results

Potential for improved data handling in CTA

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a ground-based $\gamma$-ray observatory that will observe the full sky in the energy range from 20 GeV to 100 TeV from facilities in both hemispheres. It is proposed to consist of more than 100 telescopes and the large amount of data produced will exceed the volume of current VHE Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes by $\sim$two orders of magnitude. This volume of data represents a new challenge to the community, which is looking for new data formats to transfer and store the CTA data. One of the prototypes currently under study is the ROI (Regions Of Interest) file format for camera images. It can store only those pixels of a camera image that are close to the shower, thus removing the major part of the night sky background (NSB) while keeping all pixels that might belong to the shower. Simple on-the-fly compression is used to reduce the file size even further. Here, we explain the ROI prototype in detail and present preliminary results when applied to simulations.