MoEDAL Software & Analysis Group

T. Whyntie (QMUL/Institute for Research in Schools) Thursday 10th March 2016 Panoptes TASL Scan Analysis Update Analysis of Summer ’15 classifications

• 1527 classifications obtained from June 2015 – January 2016; • Dump from Panoptes gives a 5MB CSV file – needs processing to make manageable when analysing; • Previous meetings – reported initial analysis on the blobs identified by volunteers; • Now preparing datasets for all objects (blobs, rings, oddities, background quality) in easily digestible CSV format for IRIS students to perform more detailed, systematic analysis. Initial tests of software for comparison

• Two software packages from the field of biology found – very similar topologies (cells on plates look like blobs and rings!); • OpenCV - http://www.learnopencv.com/blob-detection-using-opencv-python-c/ • CellProfiler - http://cellprofiler.org/ • Straightforward to setup and run on the TASL scan images… • …however, blob identification is proving tricky due to the scan background – famously a problem of “” (see e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23560739 ); • The question is – how would the expert person-hours required to setup and get blob identification working compare with the effort required to setup and run the volunteer-based studies and analysis? Something to discuss in the paper. Questions

• Next steps – perform the detailed analysis on the identified objects with the prepared datasets; • Obtain a scan image from the Helsinki group and prepare a new subject set for analysis via the Zooniverse volunteers; • JP – how are volunteers credited on papers? A list of logged-in users can be put on the Zooniverse/MoEDAL website, linked to from the paper (~400 volunteers, so not appropriate for the author list); • RS asked – should we incentivise volunteers with classification targets for inclusion on the author list? TW – don’t think necessary yet – good response so far without and Chris Lintott has advised against explicit gamification in the past. CERN communications team are happy to promote the project when the new dataset is ready; • JP – is it possible to have a tutorial/series of test scans to qualify volunteers? TW – yes, with Zooniverse projects that have been given developer time (requires custom code). For now can be done ad hoc using “wisdom of crowds” and volunteer weighting (higher weights for volunteers that agree); • RS/JP – how are systematics on the volunteer weighting estimated? TW – see papers listed here: https://www.zooniverse.org/about/publications such as http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008MNRAS.389.1179L

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