CLEAN Algorithm Implementation Comparisons Between Popular Software Packages

The CLEAN algorithm, first published by Högbom (1974) and its later variants such as Multiscale CLEAN (msCLEAN) by Cornwell (2008), has been the most popular tool for deconvolution in radio astronomy. Interferometric imaging used in aperture synthesis radio telescopes requires deconvolution for removal of the telescopes point spread function from the observed images. We have compared source fluxes produced by different implementations of Högbom and msCLEAN (WSCLEAN (Offringa et al. 2014, Offringa & Smirnov 2017), CASA (The CASA Team et al. 2022) with a prototype implementation of Högbom and msCLEAN for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) on two datasets. First is a simulation of multiple point sources of known intensity using Högbom, where none of the software packages detected all the simulated point sources to within 1.0% of the simulated values. The second is of supernova remnant G055.7+3.4 taken by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) using msCLEAN, where each of the software packages produced different images for the same settings.