6–10 Jul 2026
University of the Western Cape
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
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Detecting anomalous radio spectrograms with unsupervised and active learning

8 Jul 2026, 12:00
20m
Lecture Hall C5 (University of the Western Cape)

Lecture Hall C5

University of the Western Cape

Oral Presentation Track D - Astrophysics & Space Science Astrophysics & Space Science

Speaker

Hanwool Koo (University of the Western Cape)

Description

Developing automated algorithms for detecting anomalies is increasingly essential for uncovering previously unknown phenomena in astrophysics and cosmology from large volumes of radio spectrograms. To achieve this, we explore machine learning techniques for anomaly detection in the time-frequency dynamic spectra of the radio data. We evaluate our algorithms on simulated SPARKESX: Single-dish PARKES data sets for finding the uneXpected, enabling us to apply them to real, unlabeled data. We begin with essential preparation for anomaly detection, including feature extraction with a supervised Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), dimensionality reduction via Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and visualisation using Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP). Based on the prerequisites, we utilise unsupervised learning techniques, including Isolation Forest (IForest) and Local Outlier Factor (LOF), for anomaly detection. We discuss their performance and limitations, then introduce novel approaches for anomaly detection: ensemble learning of unsupervised learning methods and active learning using Astronomaly and Protege. We expect the new approaches to be more efficient and reliable for accurately detecting anomalous astrophysical signals than previous methods.

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Author

Hanwool Koo (University of the Western Cape)

Co-author

Michelle Lochner (University of the Western Cape)

Presentation materials