Generalized Hough transform: A useful algorithm for signal path detection

How is it possible to recognize ETI signals coming from exoplanets? This is one of the questions that SETI researchers must answer. In early 1998, the Italian SETI program [S. Montebugnoli, et al., SETItalia, A new era in bioastronomy, ASP Conference Series, vol. 213, 2000, pp. 501-504.] started in Medicina with the installation of the Serendip IV 24Million Channel digital spectrometer. This system daily acquires a huge quantity of data to be processed off line, in order to detect possible ETI signals. The programs devoted to this topic are collectively called SALVE 2. Here a natural evolution of a previous effort is presented, which was based on a simple Hough transform and was limited to the detection of short linear tracks in the join time frequency matrix (JTFM) stored by SIV. The new generalized Hough algorithm allows us to detect the sinusoidal tracks by the transformation of the JTF bidimensional Cartesian space (x,y), in the generalized Hough quadridimensional space, where the main vectors are the sine parameters amplitude, frequency, phase and offset. At the end of the paper some results, obtained with the computation of real and simulated JTFM, are shown.