FlameTrack

Release	Quality	Documentation

FlameTrack is a desktop application for analysing fire spread from infrared and visible-light recordings. It corrects perspective distortion, detects the flame edge frame-by-frame, and stores all results in a documented HDF5 file.

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Features

• Two experiment modes — Room Corner (6-point calibration) and Lateral Flame Spread (4-point calibration)
• Automatic point sorting — click the corners in any order, FlameTrack arranges them correctly
• Six edge-detection methods with adjustable thresholds and optional Otsu masking
• Parallel processing — Room Corner runs both panels simultaneously
• Reproducible results — every HDF5 output file stores the FlameTrack version and git commit used

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Installation

pip install flametrack
flametrack

Requires Python 3.10 – 3.13. Full documentation: flametrack.readthedocs.io

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Typical workflow

1. Click Open Folder and select your experiment directory
2. Place calibration points on the specimen plate corners
3. Enter the plate dimensions in millimetres
4. Click Dewarp → Find Edge
5. Open the resulting .h5 file in Python, MATLAB, or any HDF5 viewer

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Reading results in Python

import h5py
import numpy as np

with h5py.File("my_experiment_results_RCE.h5", "r") as f:
    edge = f["edge_results"]["data"][:]   # shape: (frames, rows)
    # edge[t, y] = x-position of the flame edge at row y in frame t

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Development installation

git clone https://github.com/FireDynamics/FlameTrack.git
cd FlameTrack
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pre-commit install
pytest tests/unit/

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Citation

If you use FlameTrack in your work, please cite:

For the latest release (v1.0.1) the BibTeX entry is:

@software{wurzburger_2026_flametrack,
  author       = {Würzburger, Minh Tam and
                  Fehr, Marc},
  title        = {FlameTrack — Flame Spread Analysis Tool},
  month        = apr,
  year         = 2026,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v1.0.1},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.19891130},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19891130},
}

If you used a different version, please use Zenodo to get the correct citation information.

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Contributing

Bug reports, feature suggestions, and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue or see the Contributing Guide.

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License

See the LICENSE file for details.