Providing training data to Genie
We will now use Aladdin to provide training data to Genie by using the paintbrush tool to mark True regions that contain a feature or target of interest and False "background" regions that do not contain the feature or target. By default, "true/target" pixels are painted in green and "false/background" pixels are painted in red. If you do not want to use green and red to mark these regions, you can left click on the Feature and Non-Feature color squares to bring up a palatte and assign your own colors. Training data is saved in Genie Training Files, and we give these files an extension *.gtf. (Note: GTF files are FITS files with a few extra keywords in their meta-data header.)
For this tutorial, we recommend starting with the sample Genie Training File we provide with the distribution, exampleTrainingData.gtf, which was copied into your working directory a few steps back. To load this example training data, click on the File menu, and select Load Training File, and then Browse GTF Files. This opens a file chooser window almost identical to that used to load new image files. You may use the "Files of Type" filter to choose to only display files of type GTF. In the file dialog box, select the file exampleTrainingData.gtf and press the OPEN button.
We now describe the tools available for providing training data from Aladdin:
Zooming/Panning: When this mode is selected, you can move around the image by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the image. You can also zoom in by pressing center mouse button, and zoom out by pressing the right mouse button.
Painting with the Brush Tool: Select this mode to mark true and false example pixels using a simple brush. The Brush Size value controls the width of the brush measured in pixels - after entering a new value, you need to press the keyboard enter key for the new value to be set. The Paint Type menu lets you set the type of mark-up. Choosing a Paint Type of Unknown lets you erase previous painting.
Painting with the Polygon Tool: This mode lets you mark polygonal regions of true/target or false/background pixels. Select your desired Paint Type, and Left mouse click to add vertices. A double left mouse click will close and fill the polygon. A right click will cancel the current polygon. Polygons drawn with Paint Type "Unknown" will erase the markup from a region.
Regions of Interest: To increase efficiency during learning, Aladdin automatically reduces the training scene to the smallest rectangular region containing all the training pixels (that is, the pixels you marked red or green). If your training data happens to be scattered widely and sparsely over the training scene, you may speed up learning by defining your own regions of interest (ROIs). TO do so, select Edit, then Clear All ROIs, and then use the Regions of Interest button to define your new ROIs: left click to start a new ROI, and left click again to fix it. Right click to cancel marking of an ROI after the initial left click.
Once you have finished providing or modifying training data, you must save the training data in a Genie training file (GTF). To do this, open Aladdin's File menu, select Save Training File, and then Browse GTF Files. Pick a new name for your training file - this name should end with the file extension ".gtf", e.g., "test-set1.gtf".
NOTE: It is possible to provide training data that falls outside all of the ROIs. This non-ROI training data will not be used by GENIE, but will be used to calculate the "fitness" score reported by Aladdin (which will no longer match the final score reported by GENIE). To ensure all training data is passed to GENIE, use the Edit > Clear all ROIs menu item to remove existing ROI boxes and then use the ROI tool to enclose your training data in one or more ROIs. If no ROI is marked, Aladdin will add an ROI that encloses all the training data in one box region. (This may be inefficient for sparse training data on a large image.)
NOTE ALSO: Beware of overlapping ROIs.