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  1. Abstract

    Data from high-energy observations are usually obtained as lists of photon events. A common analysis task for such data is to identify whether diffuse emission exists, and to estimate its surface brightness, even in the presence of point sources that may be superposed. We have developed a novel nonparametric event list segmentation algorithm to divide up the field of view into distinct emission components. We use photon location data directly, without binning them into an image. We first construct a graph from the Voronoi tessellation of the observed photon locations and then grow segments using a new adaptation of seeded region growing that we callSeeded Region Growing on Graph, after which the overall method is namedSRGonG. Starting with a set of seed locations, this results in an oversegmented data set, whichSRGonGthen coalesces using a greedy algorithm where adjacent segments are merged to minimize a model comparison statistic; we use the Bayesian Information Criterion. UsingSRGonGwe are able to identify point-like and diffuse extended sources in the data with equal facility. We validateSRGonGusing simulations, demonstrating that it is capable of discerning irregularly shaped low-surface-brightness emission structures as well as point-like sources with strengths comparable to that seen in typical X-ray data. We demonstrateSRGonG’s use on the Chandra data of the Antennae galaxies and show that it segments the complex structures appropriately.

     
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