Analyze a Cinema database using cinema_lib command line tools

In this example, we will use cinema_lib command line tools to find contours in slices of Nyx data. These contours correspond to dark matter halos and connecting filaments.

Workflow

Be sure that cinema command line tools have been installed.

Check and validate the database (verbosely)

$ cd /<path-to-repo>/cinema_tutorial_2019-11_SC/materials/data/nyx
$ cinema -itvq -d slices.cdb

Take note of the column names (timestep, slice, FILE) and associated column numbers.

Run the analysis workflow

This workflow will use the command line tools library, cinema_lib, to extract statistical properties from the data and to find and draw isolines to identify features - halos - in the data.

The computer vision based operations use openCV. The -cv-grey option takes the column number of the image as its argument. This database has three columns:

timestep,slice,FILE

First convert the database image to greyscale. Note from validating the database that FILE has column=2:

$ cinema -d slices.cdb --cv-grey 2

You can check the database column headers if you want. Notice the added column with the greyscale image.

$ cinema -i -d slices.cdb

Each command line directive adds an output column to the Cinema database, creating an updated data.csv.

Now run a series of statistical calculations, each adding a column and moving the FILE column farther down:

$ cinema -d slices.cdb --image-mean 3
$ cinema -d slices.cdb --image-stddev 4
$ cinema -d slices.cdb --image-entropy 5

Now run the contour finding algorithm. This takes two arguments: the column number of the FILE image and a contour threshold. Run it twice to compare different thresholds:

$ cinema -d slices.cdb --cv-contour-threshold 5 70
$ cinema -d slices.cdb --cv-contour-threshold 5 45

View the nyx.cdb in the CinemaExplorer viewer

Open CinemaCompare in Firefox:

$ firefox /<path-to-repo>/cinema_tutorial_2019-11_SC/materials/cinema_explorer.html

Use the parallel coordinates to select on the different parameters and explore the output database. The dropdown Select Database menu can be used to check the original database (before this workflow) and a finished database (after this workflow) to see if your output is as expected. Be sure to click Load after selecting a specific database.