Detection of Oscillation-like Patterns in Eclipsing Binary Light Curves using Neural Network-based Object Detection Algorithms

TL;DR

This study evaluates convolutional neural network-based object detection algorithms for identifying oscillation-like patterns in eclipsing binary light curves, demonstrating high accuracy and potential for automated astrophysical analysis.

Contribution

It compares multiple state-of-the-art object detection models, including custom and pre-trained networks, for the first time in the context of binary star light curve analysis.

Findings

Pre-trained models achieved over 99% mAP in pattern detection.

Faster R-CNN and YOLO performed best in accuracy; SSD was fastest.

Models successfully generalized to unseen Kepler data.

Abstract

The primary aim of this research is to evaluate several convolutional neural network-based object detection algorithms for identifying oscillation-like patterns in light curves of eclipsing binaries. This involves creating a robust detection framework that can effectively process both synthetic light curves and real observational data. The study employs several state-of-the-art object detection algorithms, including Single Shot MultiBox Detector, Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network, You Only Look Once, and EfficientDet besides a custom non-pretrained model implemented from scratch. Synthetic light curve images and images derived from observational TESS light curves of known eclipsing binaries with a pulsating component were constructed with corresponding annotation files using custom scripts. The models were trained and validated on established datasets, followed by testing on unseen {\it{Kepler}} data to assess their generalization performance. The statistical metrics are also calculated to review the quality of each model. The results indicate that the pre-trained models exhibit high accuracy and reliability in detecting the targeted patterns. Faster R-CNN and You Only Look Once, in particular, showed superior performance in terms of object detection evaluation metrics on the validation dataset such as mAP value exceeding 99\%. Single Shot MultiBox Detector, on the other hand, is the fastest although it shows slightly lower performance with a mAP of 97\%. These findings highlight the potential of these models to contribute significantly to the automated determination of pulsating components in eclipsing binary systems, facilitating more efficient and comprehensive astrophysical investigations.