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Uncertainty quantification for radio interferometric imaging - I. Proximal MCMC methods

Cai, X; Pereyra, M; McEwen, JD; (2018) Uncertainty quantification for radio interferometric imaging - I. Proximal MCMC methods. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 480 (3) pp. 4154-4169. 10.1093/mnras/sty2004. Green open access

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Abstract

Uncertainty quantification is a critical missing component in radio interferometric imaging that will only become increasingly important as the big-data era of radio interferometry emerges. Since radio interferometric imaging requires solving a high-dimensional, ill-posed inverse problem, uncertainty quantification is difficult but also critical to the accurate scientific interpretation of radio observations. Statistical sampling approaches to perform Bayesian inference, like Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, can in principle recover the full posterior distribution of the image, from which uncertainties can then be quantified. However, traditional high-dimensional sampling methods are generally limited to smooth (e.g. Gaussian) priors and cannot be used with sparsity-promoting priors. Sparse priors, motivated by the theory of compressive sensing, have been shown to be highly effective for radio interferometric imaging. In this article proximal MCMC methods are developed for radio interferometric imaging, leveraging proximal calculus to support non-differential priors, such as sparse priors, in a Bayesian framework. Furthermore, three strategies to quantify uncertainties using the recovered posterior distribution are developed: (i) local (pixel-wise) credible intervals to provide error bars for each individual pixel; (ii) highest posterior density credible regions; and (iii) hypothesis testing of image structure. These forms of uncertainty quantification provide rich information for analysing radio interferometric observations in a statistically robust manner.

Type: Article
Title: Uncertainty quantification for radio interferometric imaging - I. Proximal MCMC methods
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2004
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2004
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: methods: data analysis, methods: numerical, methods: statistical, techniques: image processing, techniques: interferometric
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062462
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