FRTSearch: Unified Detection and Parameter Inference of Fast Radio Transients using Instance Segmentation

TL;DR

FRTSearch is a novel framework that combines detection and physical characterization of Fast Radio Transients using deep learning and physics-based algorithms, enabling efficient, real-time analysis of large radio astronomy data.

Contribution

It introduces a unified, end-to-end approach leveraging instance segmentation and physics-driven inference, with a new annotated dataset and significant improvements over traditional methods.

Findings

Achieves 98.0% recall on FAST-FREX dataset.

Reduces false positives by over 99.9% compared to PRESTO.

Provides up to 13.9x speedup in processing.

Abstract

The exponential growth of data from modern radio telescopes presents a significant challenge to traditional single-pulse search algorithms, which are computationally intensive and prone to high false-positive rates due to Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). In this work, we introduce FRTSearch, an end-to-end framework unifying the detection and physical characterization of Fast Radio Transients (FRTs). Leveraging the morphological universality of dispersive trajectories in time-frequency dynamic spectra, we reframe FRT detection as a pattern recognition problem governed by the cold plasma dispersion relation. To facilitate this, we constructed CRAFTS-FRT, a pixel-level annotated dataset derived from the Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS), comprising 2{,}392 instances across diverse source classes. This dataset enables the training of a Mask R-CNN model for precise trajectory segmentation. Coupled with our physics-driven IMPIC algorithm, the framework maps the geometric coordinates of segmented trajectories to directly infer the Dispersion Measure (DM) and Time of Arrival (ToA). Benchmarking on the FAST-FREX dataset shows that FRTSearch achieves a 98.0\% recall, competitive with exhaustive search methods, while reducing false positives by over 99.9\% compared to PRESTO and delivering a processing speedup of up to $13.9\times$. Furthermore, the framework demonstrates robust cross-facility generalization, detecting all 19 tested FRBs from the ASKAP survey without retraining. By shifting the paradigm from ``search-then-identify'' to ``detect-and-infer,'' FRTSearch provides a scalable, high-precision solution for real-time discovery in the era of petabyte-scale radio astronomy.