MACIM: The Markov Chain Imager
The MArkov Chain Imager (MACIM) is a publically-available Monte Carlo imaging algorithm, with details published in the SPIE proceedings for the Progress in the Advances in Stellar Interferometry conference in Orlando, 2006 (see publications list below).
Since the original publication, John Monnier added additional regularisers to the code, and Fabien Baron used MACIM as the engine for his SQUEEZE project, which is a work in progress with many ambitious goals. Most importantly, it adds polychromatic imaging to MACIM, and has all of the original MACIM features. You can find SQUEEZE at Fabien's Github repository. My intention with future development is to continue with SQUEEZE rather than updating MACIM.
The code is written in C, and should run under any Unix system (including Mac OS X). To download the original code, click here. The README file in this distribution contains a little information on how to run the code, but you'll have to see the SPIE paper for details. In order to display the fits images and chi-squared while running MACIM, use the IDL procedure display_macim. This uses a library function (modified from the standard IDL distribution) image_cont.
Publications using MACIM
This list is not complete, but includes some key papers.- Ireland, Monnier and Thureau, Proc. SPIE, 2006, Monte-Carlo imaging for optical interferometry The original paper.
- Monnier et al, Science, 2007, Imaging the Surface of Altair
- Ireland et al, ApJ, 2007, Born-Again Protoplanetary Disk around Mira B
- Zhao et al, ApJ, 2008, First Resolved Images of the Eclipsing and Interacting Binary β Lyrae
- Kraus and Ireland, ApJ, 2012, LkCa 15: A Young Exoplanet Caught at Formation?
- Baron et al, Proc. SPIE, 2012, The 2012 interferometric imaging beauty contest John Monnier's winning entry using a modified MACIM