Large-scale imaging surveys will increase the number of galaxy-scale strong lensing candidates by maybe three orders of magnitudes beyond the number known today. Finding these rare objects will require picking them out of at least tens of millions of images, and deriving scientific results from them will require quantifying the efficiency and bias of any search method. To achieve these objectives automated methods must be developed. Because gravitational lenses are rare objects, reducing false positives will be particularly important. We present a description and results of an open gravitational lens finding challenge. Participants were asked to classify 100,000 candidate objects as to whether they were gravitational lenses or not with the goal of developing better automated methods for finding lenses in large data sets. A variety of methods were used including visual inspection, arc and ring finders, support vector machines (SVM) and convolutional neural networks (CNN). We find that many of the methods will be easily fast enough to analyse the anticipated data flow. In test data, several methods are able to identify upwards of half the lenses after applying some thresholds on the lens characteristics such as lensed image brightness, size or contrast with the lens galaxy without making a single false-positive identification. This is significantly better than direct inspection by humans was able to do. Having multi-band, ground based data is found to be better for this purpose than single-band space based data with lower noise and higher resolution, suggesting that multi colour data is crucial. Multi-band space based data will be superior to ground based data. The most difficult challenge for a lens finder is differentiating between rare, irregular and ring-like face-on galaxies and true gravitational lenses. The degree to which the efficiency and biases of lens finders can be quantified largely depends on the realism of the simulated data on which the finders are trained.Article number, page 1 of 26

A novel approach for vector ordering is introduced in this paper. The generic framework is based on a supervised learning formulation which leads to reduced orderings. A training set for the background and another training set for the foreground are needed as well as a supervised method to construct the ordering mapping. Two particular cases of learning techniques are considered in detail: 1) kriging-based vector ordering and 2) support vector machines-based vector ordering. These supervised orderings may then be used for the extension of mathematical morphology to vector images. In particular, in this paper, we focus on the application of morphological processing to hyperspectral images, illustrating the performance with practical examples.

Numerous ongoing and future large area surveys (e.g. DES, EUCLID, LSST, WFIRST), will increase by several orders of magnitude the volume of data that can be exploited for galaxy morphology studies. The full potential of these surveys can only be unlocked with the development of automated, fast and reliable analysis methods. In this paper, we present DeepLeGATo, a new method for two-dimensional photometric galaxy profile modeling, based on convolutional neural networks. Our code is trained and validated on analytic profiles (HST/CANDELS F160W filter) and it is able to retrieve the full set of parameters of one-component Sérsic models: total magnitude, effective radius, Sérsic index, axis ratio. We show detailed comparisons between our code and GALFIT. On simulated data, our method is more accurate than GALFIT and ∼ 3000 time faster on GPU (∼ 50 times when running on the same CPU). On real data, DeepLeGATo trained on simulations behaves similarly to GALFIT on isolated galaxies. With a fast domain adaptation step made with the 0.1 − 0.8 per cent the size of the training set, our code is easily capable to reproduce the results obtained with GALFIT even on crowded regions. DeepLeGATo does not require any human intervention beyond the training step, rendering it much automated than traditional profiling methods. The development of this method for more complex models (twocomponent galaxies, variable PSF, dense sky regions) could constitute a fundamental tool in the era of big data in astronomy.

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This chapter illustrates the suitability of recent multivariate ordering approaches to morphological analysis of colour and multispectral images working on their vector representation. On the one hand, supervised ordering renders machine learning notions and image processing techniques, through a learning stage to provide a total ordering in the colour/multispectral vector space. On the other hand, anomaly-based ordering, automatically detects spectral diversity over a majority background, allowing an adaptive processing of salient parts of a colour/multispectral image. These two multivariate ordering paradigms allow the definition of morphological operators for multivariate images, from algebraic dilation and erosion to more advanced techniques as morphological simplification, decomposition and segmentation. A number of applications are reviewed and implementation issues are discussed in detail.

This paper describes a new methodology for noninvasive, objective, and automated assessment of yield in vineyards using image analysis and Boolean model. Image analysis, as an inexpensive and noninvasive procedure, has been studied for this purpose, but the effect of occlusions from the cluster or other organs of the vine has an impact that diminishes the quality of the results. To reduce the influence of the occlusions in the estimation, the number of berries was assessed using the Boolean model. To evaluate the methodology, three different datasets were studied: cluster images, manually acquired vine images, and vine images captured on-the-go using a quad. The proposed algorithm estimated the number of berries in cluster images with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 20 and a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.80. Vine images manually taken were evaluated, providing 310 grams of mean error and R2=0.81. Finally, images captured using a quad equipped with artificial light and automatic camera triggering were also analysed. The estimation obtained applying the Boolean model had 610 grams of mean error per segment (three vines) and R2=0.78. The reliability against occlusions and segmentation errors of the Boolean model makes it ideal for vineyard yield estimation. Its application greatly improved the results when compared to a simpler estimator based on the relationship between cluster area and weight.

Abstract-The open problem of the generalization of mathematical morphology to vector images is handled in this paper using the paradigm of depth functions. Statistical depth functions provide from the "deepest" point a "center-outward ordering" of a multidimensional data distribution and they can be therefore used to construct morphological operators. The fundamental assumption of this data-driven approach is the existence of "background/foreground" image representation. Examples in real color and hyperspectral images illustrate the results.Index Terms-Hyperspectral images, multivariate morphology, statistical depth function.

We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance testing altogether. There are alternatives that address study design and sample size much more directly than significance testing does; but none of the statistical tools should be taken as the new magic method giving clear-cut mechanical answers. Inference should not be based on single studies at all, but on cumulative evidence from multiple independent studies. When evaluating the strength of the evidence, we should consider, for example, auxiliary assumptions, the strength of the experimental design, and implications for applications. To boil all this down to a binary decision based on a p-value threshold of 0.05, 0.01, 0.005, or anything else, is not acceptable.