Automated Detection of Coronal Mass Ejections in STEREO Heliospheric Imager Data

We have performed, for the first time, the successful automated detection of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in data from the inner heliospheric imager (HI-1) cameras on the STEREO-A spacecraft. Detection of CMEs is done in time-height maps based on the application of the Hough transform, using a modified version of the CACTus software package, conventionally applied to coronagraph data. In this paper, we describe the method of detection. We present the results of the application of the technique to a few CMEs, which are well detected in the HI-1 imagery, and compare these results with those based on manual-cataloging methodologies. We discuss, in detail, the advantages and disadvantages of this method.