Simultaneous multi-band detection of Low Surface Brightness galaxies with Markovian modelling

International audienceWe present to the astronomical community an algorithm for the detection of Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies in images, called MARSIAA (MARkovian Software for Image Analysis in Astronomy), which is based on multi-scale Markovian modeling. MARSIAA can be applied simultaneously to different bands. It segments an image into a user-defined number of classes, according to their surface brightness and surroundings – typically, one or two classes contain the LSB structures. We have developed an algorithm, called DetectLSB, which allows the efficient identification of LSB galaxies from among the candidate sources selected by MARSIAA. The application of the method to two and three bands simultaneously was tested on simulated images. Based on our tests we are confident that we can detect LSB galaxies down to a central surface brightness level of only 1.5 times the standard deviation from the mean pixel value in the image background. To assess the robustness of our method, the method was applied to a set of 18 B and I band images (covering 1.3 square degrees in total) of the Virgo cluster to which Sabatini et al. (2003, 2005) previously applied a matched-filters dwarf LSB galaxy search algorithm. We have detected all 20 objects from the Sabatini et al. catalog which we could classify by eye as