Morphological Image Similarity Search on the ALMA Science Archive Query Interface Using Deep Unsupervised Contrastive Representation Learning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel morphological image similarity search feature in the ALMA Science Archive, utilizing deep unsupervised contrastive learning to assist astronomers in finding similar observations based on image content.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of image similarity search in an astronomical archive using self-supervised contrastive learning for source morphology comparison.

Findings

Enables astronomers to find morphologically similar images efficiently.

Provides real-time, interactive refinement of search results.

First application of deep unsupervised contrastive learning in an astronomical archive.

Abstract

With the exponential growth of astronomical data over time, finding the needles in the haystack is becoming increasingly difficult. The next frontier for science archives is to enable searches not only on observational metadata, but also on the content of the observations themselves. As a step in this direction, we have implemented morphological image similarity search into the ALMA Science Archive (ASA). To achieve this we use self-supervised contrastive affine-transformation-independent representation learning of source morphologies with a deep neural network. For a given image on the ASA web interface, astronomers are presented with a summary view of the morphologically most similar images. Each time an astronomer selects an additional image from that view, the display is instantly updated to show the images most similar to the combination of the selected images. Each selection thus refines the similarity display according to the scientific needs of the astronomer. This is the first time image similarity search has been offered in an astronomical science archive.