Statistics on the use of ImageJ in different disciplines

[Catherine Amoateng]

Does anyone know the statistics on the usage of ImageJ? All I get when I search for the statistics on the usage is country by country stats.
Thank you!

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[Herbie]

Greetings Catherine,

for several reasons I'm pretty sure that you won't get reliable data
that answers for your question. The problem starts with the various
flavors of ImageJ and doesn't end with the unknown number of usages by
technical personnel...

What you could try to do, however is a research concerning specialized
plugins for ImageJ but be aware of the fact that the number of plugins
for ImageJ is several thousands and they are not accessible from a
single or a few places...

I fear you will be lost.

Regards

Herbie

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Am 18.11.20 um 20:24 schrieb Catherine Amoateng:
> Does anyone know the statistics on the usage of ImageJ? All I get when I search for the statistics on the usage is country by country stats.
> Thank you!
>
> --
> ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html
>

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ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

[John Brear]

Hi Catherine, and everyone,

I have wondered the same - and not found any numbers anywhere.

I am in a distinct minority, being a metallurgist using IJ for following the precipitation, growth and dissolution of precipitate particles in steel.  A particular issue is that we have several species simultaneously present, of distinct (and very different) sizes, shapes, and locations within the microstructure.   Selecting imaging conditions that allow sensible resolution and quantification is a challenge.
 
Various uses of IJ have been published in the metallurgical literature, but often they are characterized by an uniformed approach - using jpeg file format is a common source of error.  
There is anecdotal evidence of a reluctance amongst fellow materials scientists to engage with (and benefit from) this list as the world of life-sciences is seen as 'too different' from ours.  Yes, there are differences, but much that can be adapted and learned from.

Best wishes!

-----Original Message-----
From: Catherine Amoateng <[hidden email]>
Sent: 18 November 2020 19:25
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Statistics on the use of ImageJ in different disciplines

Does anyone know the statistics on the usage of ImageJ? All I get when I search for the statistics on the usage is country by country stats.
Thank you!

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ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

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[Stein Rørvik]

I agree that this is an interesting topic.

I belong to the minority too, as I use ImageJ within the field of materials science; more specific the study of electrodes and raw materials used for light metal production. I use ImageJ to visualize and quantify porosity, measure gradients and grain-sizes, failure analysis, etc. In the past I used optical microscopy for the imaging, but I now mostly use micro X-ray CT as the benefits of examining the entire 3D sample in a non-destructive way, by far outweighs the disadvantage of the poor spatial resolution. I usually work with a 5-20 µm voxel size which is sufficient to image the cm-sized structures of the materials.

I don't think the heavy connection between ImageJ and biological sciences matters much, especially when using ImageJ 1.x. Most of the functions there are of a general nature and will work with any type of image data. I very rarely use Fiji, as the many plugins there are focused on biosciences and rarely useful in a materials context. The main exception is BoneJ, which is excellent for analyzing all kinds of connected porous networks. I have also found VolumeJ and TransformJ to be very useful for general handling of 3D data. All these three plugins work fine in ImageJ 1.x too.

The main reason I prefer to use ImageJ over commercial tools like Avizo and Volume Graphics is its simplicity, speed, and flexibility. It only takes a second or two to open the up to 64 GB datasets I get from the µCT data reconstructions, using virtual stack. All the necessary calibrations are taken care of by a macro that interprets the metadata provided by the µCT software. I usually also recommend ImageJ to students who work on our projects, and see that they use a very short time to get started with it, as ImageJ is kind of self-explanatory via its menu structure.

Stein

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 22. november 2020 11:55
Subject: Re: Statistics on the use of ImageJ in different disciplines

Hi Catherine, and everyone,

I have wondered the same - and not found any numbers anywhere.

I am in a distinct minority, being a metallurgist using IJ for following the precipitation, growth and dissolution of precipitate particles in steel.  A particular issue is that we have several species simultaneously present, of distinct (and very different) sizes, shapes, and locations within the microstructure.   Selecting imaging conditions that allow sensible resolution and quantification is a challenge.
 
Various uses of IJ have been published in the metallurgical literature, but often they are characterized by an uniformed approach - using jpeg file format is a common source of error.  
There is anecdotal evidence of a reluctance amongst fellow materials scientists to engage with (and benefit from) this list as the world of life-sciences is seen as 'too different' from ours.  Yes, there are differences, but much that can be adapted and learned from.

Best wishes!

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 18 November 2020 19:25
Subject: Statistics on the use of ImageJ in different disciplines

Does anyone know the statistics on the usage of ImageJ? All I get when I search for the statistics on the usage is country by country stats.
Thank you!

--


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ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

[Herbie]

For whatever reasons I was unable to post this contribution for about six
hours now...


Greetings John,

thanks for chiming in!

First we should perhaps realize that image processing is part of a field
named "signal processing" and as such it is a field of dedicated university
institutes and according study programs. That said, it is an academic
discipline in its own and gaining expertise requires intensive and year-long
studies.

I don't agree that the application of signal processing methods--that
essentially are applied mathematics--to various fields such as the life
sciences or material sciences require specialized approaches. Even within
these fields the requirements are already rather diverse. Think of the large
variety of image acquisition methods in the life sciences from NMR and CT to
light sheet and super-resolution microscopy, etc. On the other hand the just
mentioned methods are used in the material sciences as well.

I think we need to realize that mathematics doesn't care about the objects
we are dealing with, be they living cells in bio-medicine or cellular
domains in metallurgy.

ImageJ is used by very many people who are not in the life sciences and some
of them are very active on this list. Others, such as those working in
astronomy and astrophysics have their own fora.

I can only conjecture that a certain imbalance of contributions on the list
may be due to the greater remoteness of mathematical methods for life
scientist when compared to material scientists, but I may be wrong
especially because I have several friends who studied biology and
mathematics...

Best regards

Herbie

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