bwaid@ducvax.auburn.edu (05/07/91)
Does anyone know of a program that will count the number of occurences of something in a digitized image. Some people at a medical school are trying to count the number of cells in an image on an Amiga. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks Barry Waid bwaid@ducvax.auburn.edu bwaid@auducvax
tbissett@nstar.rn.com (Travis Bissett) (05/08/91)
bwaid@ducvax.auburn.edu writes: > Does anyone know of a program that will count the number of occurences of > something in a digitized image. Some people at a medical school are trying to > count the number of cells in an image on an Amiga. Any help will be > appreciated. Speaking from my own personal ignorance, I'd be surprised if you find a ready made canned solution to the problem you described. It really is non-trivial -- but then, it's the sort of challenge that many in academia and industry have been working on for a long time. In essence you've asked for a free and easy solution to the "robot vision" problem. You want to take a digitized image, perform certain signal processing techniques, and end up with an unamgbiguous set of visual "objects" (whether they are tansk or cells or bolts in a bag). It certainly is in the realm of technical possibility to count cells from a microscopic camera picture -- I've yet to hear of a commercial explotation of it, though, which suggests that the problem is still in the experimental/developmental stages. The counting part is easy --once you get a clean image of idebtifying cell structure just adapt normal OCR algorithms. But getting a setup and program versatile enough to remove all variables of slide specimen, camera noise, etc. is a real task. Maybe a semi-automatic process is good enough for now, where some grad student makes the decision about what signal processing needs to be performed in order to get the acceptable level of image quality. Sorry that I'm no help :-) Travis -- Travis Bissett NSTAR conferencing site 219-289-0287/317-251-7391 internet: tbissett@nstar.rn.com 1300 newsgroups - 8 inbound lines uucp: ..!uunet!nstar.rn.com!tbissett 99 file areas - 4300 megabytes --- backbone news & mail feeds available - contact larry@nstar.rn.com ---
Steven_Biddle@cavebbs.gen.nz (Steven Biddle) (05/08/91)
Pixmate by Progressive Peripherals has that feature, it's an image processing program, and can give you pretty acurate total numbers of pixels, and the number and percentage that are a certain colour..
rey@ecl.psu.edu (05/08/91)
In article <0k7k22w161w@nstar.rn.com>, tbissett@nstar.rn.com (Travis Bissett) writes: > bwaid@ducvax.auburn.edu writes: > >> Does anyone know of a program that will count the number of occurences of >> something in a digitized image. Some people at a medical school are trying to >> count the number of cells in an image on an Amiga. Any help will be >> appreciated. > > Speaking from my own personal ignorance, I'd be surprised if you find a > ready made canned solution to the problem you described. It really is > non-trivial -- but then, it's the sort of challenge that many in academia > and industry have been working on for a long time. In essence you've asked > for a free and easy solution to the "robot vision" problem. You want to > take a digitized image, perform certain signal processing techniques, and > end up with an unamgbiguous set of visual "objects" (whether they are tansk > or cells or bolts in a bag). It certainly is in the realm of technical > possibility to count cells from a microscopic camera picture -- I've yet to > hear of a commercial explotation of it, though, which suggests that the > problem is still in the experimental/developmental stages. The counting part > is easy --once you get a clean image of idebtifying cell structure just > adapt normal OCR algorithms. But getting a setup and program versatile > enough to remove all variables of slide specimen, camera noise, etc. is a > real task. Maybe a semi-automatic process is good enough for now, where some > grad student makes the decision about what signal processing needs to be > performed in order to get the acceptable level of image quality. > > Sorry that I'm no help :-) > > Travis > > -- > Travis Bissett NSTAR conferencing site 219-289-0287/317-251-7391 > internet: tbissett@nstar.rn.com 1300 newsgroups - 8 inbound lines > uucp: ..!uunet!nstar.rn.com!tbissett 99 file areas - 4300 megabytes > --- backbone news & mail feeds available - contact larry@nstar.rn.com --- About 10 years ago, when I was a chemist working for Warner-Lambert, I recall coming across such a device for colony counting. It was part of an integrated system in which the user slid a petri dish under a video camera. The image of the petri dish was displayed and digitized, meanwhile the computer would encircle each colony and count it. You realize of course, that the problem of counting cultures is a very constrained problem making it relatively easy (culture's usually don't overlap and there is good contrast between the culture and the medium). The problem of cell counting in an overlapping situation is indeed difficult, but I got the impression that the original poster was looking for a simple colony counter. Alas, I don't know where there is a colony counter available for the Amiga, but if one turns up, I'd be interested in finding out where you got it. Bob
peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) (05/08/91)
In article <0k7k22w161w@nstar.rn.com> tbissett@nstar.rn.com (Travis Bissett) writes: >bwaid@ducvax.auburn.edu writes: > >> Does anyone know of a program that will count the number of occurences of >> something in a digitized image. Some people at a medical school are trying to >> count the number of cells in an image on an Amiga. Any help will be >> appreciated. > >Speaking from my own personal ignorance, I'd be surprised if you find a >ready made canned solution to the problem you described. It really is >non-trivial -- but then, it's the sort of challenge that many in academia >and industry have been working on for a long time. .... > It certainly is in the realm of technical >possibility to count cells from a microscopic camera picture -- I've yet to >hear of a commercial explotation of it, though, which suggests that the >problem is still in the experimental/developmental stages. You're right, but with the help of the Amiga it really can be done. One of our German developers does precisely this. We already had him on some faires with his microscope, attached camera and his software, it was always a big attraction. But this is a commercial package, somewhere in the $$$$ range, and I guess the guy wouldn't like very much to tell the world about his algorithm tricks... -- Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions... Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk