Sunspots and Coronal Bright Points Tracking using a Hybrid Algorithm of PSO and Active Contour Model

In the last decades there has been a steady increase of high-resolution data, from ground-based and spaceborne solar instruments, and also of solar data volume. These huge image archives require efficient automatic image processing software tools capable of detecting and tracking various features in the solar atmosphere. Results of application of such tools are essential for studies of solar activity evolution, climate change understanding and space weather prediction. The follow up of interplanetary and near-Earth phenomena requires, among others, automatic tracking algorithms that can determine where a feature is located, on successive images taken along the period of observation. Full-disc solar images, obtained both with the ground-based solar telescopes and the instruments onboard the satellites, provide essential observational material for solar physicists and space weather researchers for better understanding the Sun, studying the evolution of various features in the solar atmosphere, and also investigating solar differential rotation by tracking such features along time. Here we demonstrate and discuss the suitability of applying a hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and Active Contour model for tracking and determining the differential rotation of sunspots and coronal bright points (CBPs) on a set of selected solar images. The results obtained confirm that the proposed approach constitutes a promising tool for investigating the evolution of solar activity and also for automating tracking features on massive solar image archives.