aim-resolve: Automatic identification and modeling for Bayesian radio interferometric imaging

¹ Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Natural Sciences, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
² Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, Nijmegen, 6525 AJ, The Netherlands
³ Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ Technische Universität München (TUM), Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁵ Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany
⁶ Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
⁷ German Center for Astrophysics, Postplatz 1, 02826 Görlitz, Germany

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 4 December 2025
Accepted: 4 May 2026

Abstract

Modern radio interferometers deliver large volumes of data containing high-sensitivity sky maps over wide fields of view. These large-area observations can contain various and superposed structures such as point sources, extended objects, and large-scale diffuse emission. To fully realize the potential of these observations, it is crucial to build appropriate sky emission models that separate and reconstruct the underlying astrophysical components. We introduce aim-resolve, an automatic and iterative method that combines the Bayesian imaging algorithm resolve with deep learning and clustering algorithms in order to jointly solve the reconstruction and source extraction problem. The method identifies and models different astrophysical components in radio observations while providing uncertainty quantification of the results. By using different model descriptions for point sources, extended objects, and diffuse background emission, the method efficiently separates the individual components and improves the overall reconstruction. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method on synthetic image data containing multiple different sources. We further show the application of aim-resolve to an L-band (856–1712 MHz) MeerKAT observation of the radio galaxy ESO 137-006 and other radio galaxies in that environment. We observe a reasonable object identification for both applications, yielding a clean separation of the individual components and precise reconstructions of point sources and extended objects along with detailed uncertainty quantification. In particular, the method enables the creation of catalogs containing source positions and brightnesses and the corresponding uncertainties. The full decoupling of sky emission model and instrument response makes the method applicable to a wide variety of instruments or wavelength bands.