AIMBAT

Automated and Interactive Measurement of Body wave Arrival Times

Documentation: https://aimbat.pysmo.org

Source Code: https://github.com/pysmo/aimbat

AIMBAT (Automated and Interactive Measurement of Body wave Arrival Times) is an open-source tool for measuring teleseismic body wave arrival times. Seismograms are automatically aligned using the ICCS [Iterative Cross-Correlation and Stack]¹ algorithm; picks are then reviewed and refined interactively before a final MCCC (Multi-Channel Cross-Correlation) ² pass computes the definitive arrival times.

Version 2

AIMBAT v2 is a complete rewrite. It shares the same goal as v1 but none of the code.

• Complete rewrite. The algorithms are optimised and projects are stored in a SQLite database (via SQLModel), making them persistent, portable, and inspectable.
• Focused scope. Much of the underlying code has moved into the pysmo library, leaving AIMBAT to focus on the user-facing ICCS → quality-control → MCCC workflow rather than reimplementing general seismogram utilities.
• Flexible data storage. A single project can hold any number of seismic events. Files from different events can live anywhere on disk — no need to keep them in separate directories or follow a particular layout.
• Maintainable. v2 is built on modern, typed Python with a comprehensive test suite and strict dependency management, so it keeps working as the ecosystem evolves.
• Multiple interfaces. AIMBAT can be used via a CLI, an interactive shell, a terminal UI, or directly as a Python library.

Quick Start

pip install aimbat

# Create a project in the current directory
aimbat project create

# Import SAC files — events and stations are detected automatically
aimbat data add *.sac

# List events to find their IDs, then set one as the default
aimbat event list
aimbat event default <ID>

# Open the terminal UI to run ICCS, review picks, and run MCCC
aimbat tui

# Or work interactively from the shell (tab-completion, command history)
aimbat shell

Authors' Contacts

• Xiaoting Lou — xlou at u.northwestern.edu
• Suzan van der Lee — suzan at northwestern.edu
• Simon Lloyd — simon at pysmo.org