BIPP: An efficient HPC implementation of the Bluebild algorithm for radio astronomy
The Bluebild algorithm is a new technique for image synthesis in radio astronomy which decomposes the sky into distinct energy levels using functional principal component analysis. These levels can be linearly combined to construct a least-squares estimate of the radio sky, i.e. minimizing the residuals between measured and predicted visibilities. This approach is particularly useful for deconvolution-free imaging or for scientific applications that need to filter specific energy levels. We present an HPC implementation of the Bluebild algorithm for radio-interferometric imaging: Bluebild Imaging++ (BIPP). The library features interfaces to C++, C and Python and is designed with seamless GPU acceleration in mind. We evaluate the accuracy and performance of BIPP on simulated observations of the upcoming Square Kilometer Array Observatory and real data from the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope. We find that BIPP offers accurate wide-field imaging and has competitive execution time with respect to the interferometric imaging libraries CASA and WSClean for images with ≤106 pixels. Furthermore, due to the energy level decomposition, images produced with BIPP can reveal information about faint and diffuse structures before any cleaning iterations. BIPP does not perform any regularization, but we suggest methods to integrate the output of BIPP with CLEAN. The source code of BIPP is publicly released.
2-s2.0-85212860205
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Centro Svizzero di Calcolo Scientifico
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Western Sydney University
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
2025-04-01
51
100920
REVIEWED
EPFL
| Funder | Funding(s) | Grant Number | Grant URL |
Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing | |||
SERI | |||
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs | |||
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