Minimum Feret Diameter

[alisona5]

Is there a way to measure Minimum Feret Diameter in ImageJ.   I have seen
posts on various sites discussing that it is in the source code, but is
commented out.  However, I have not seen any resolution to this issue.  I
need to measure the minimal feret diameter :the minimum distance of parallel
tangents at opposing borders.  This is the accepted parameter in my field
and I cannot use any other measurements.  
Does anyone have a plugin or way to go about measuring this?  
Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks!
Alison

[dscho]

Hi,

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009, alisona5 wrote:

> I need to measure the minimal feret diameter :the minimum distance of
> parallel tangents at opposing borders.  This is the accepted parameter
> in my field and I cannot use any other measurements.  Does anyone have a
> plugin or way to go about measuring this?

Would this help?

        http://doube.org/plugins.html#rotcal

Just download Rotating_Calipers.java into your plugins/ folder and run it
with Plugins>Compile And Run...

<shameless-plug>
        If you see the message "This JVM does not include the javac
        compiler. [...]", you might want to try Fiji:
        http://pacific.mpi-cbg.de/
</shameless-plug>

Ciao,
Dscho

[Gabriel Landini]

On Friday 16 January 2009, alisona5 wrote:
> Is there a way to measure Minimum Feret Diameter in ImageJ.   I have seen
> posts on various sites discussing that it is in the source code, but is
> commented out.  However, I have not seen any resolution to this issue.  I
> need to measure the minimal feret diameter :the minimum distance of
> parallel tangents at opposing borders.  This is the accepted parameter in
> my field and I cannot use any other measurements.

Note however that the *original* definition of the Feret Diameter considers  
one direction of scan (i.e. not the rotating callipers, but the "height" or
the "width" of the object bounding rectangle in a fixed direction for all
particles). The minimum FD  which is estimated from the population, not for
every particle, is likely to be overestimated (as one cannot guarantee that
the thinnest particles would be orientated in such a way that the scan
direction corresponds exactly to the perpendicular to the smallest diameter).

The rotating callipers, will give you the smallest possible diameter of the
convex hull, but for the reasons above, that is likely to be smaller than
other estimates of FD using the traditional method.

Some old imaging analysers used to incorporate more than one direction of scan
to improve the stats, but the problem remains essentially the same.
Search Google for:
A Guide to Pharmaceutical Particulate Science by Crowder et al
You can read that in page 63.

From your description, it seems that you are looking for  the minimal rotating
calliper (or convex hull) diameter of each particle, but strictly speaking
that is not the minimal FD.
Perhaps one should be careful about comparisons of the rotating calliper
results with other people's data minimum FD.

Regards,

G.

[Michael Doube]

Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009, alisona5 wrote:
>
>> I need to measure the minimal feret diameter :the minimum distance of
>> parallel tangents at opposing borders.  This is the accepted parameter
>> in my field and I cannot use any other measurements.  Does anyone have a
>> plugin or way to go about measuring this?
>
> Would this help?
>
> http://doube.org/plugins.html#rotcal
>
> Just download Rotating_Calipers.java into your plugins/ folder and run it
> with Plugins>Compile And Run...
>
> <shameless-plug>
> If you see the message "This JVM does not include the javac
> compiler. [...]", you might want to try Fiji:
> http://pacific.mpi-cbg.de/
> </shameless-plug>
>
> Ciao,
> Dscho

It is also implemented as a macro, if you're having trouble compiling
the plugin ;-)

http://doube.org/macros.html#rotcal

Mike

[alisona5]

Does anyone know how to automate this rotating calipers macro or plugin. I do not want to have to make a ROI for each object because I have thousands.  Is there a way to use this on all particles returned by the particle analyzer?

Thanks for everyone's help!
Alison

<quote author="Michael Doube-3">
Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> Would this help?
>
> http://doube.org/plugins.html#rotcal
>
> Just download Rotating_Calipers.java into your plugins/ folder and run it
> with Plugins>Compile And Run...
>
It is also implemented as a macro, if you're having trouble compiling
the plugin ;-)

http://doube.org/macros.html#rotcal

Mike