Counting Barnacles on a panel

Posted by Emiliano Pinori on Oct 29, 2009; 2:24pm
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Counting-Barnacles-on-a-panel-tp3690575.html

Hi,
I'm working on antifouling marine paints and had lots of panels to analyze. I found ImageJ a very helpfull tool. Anyway when it cames to the more adult and close togheter barnacles individuals on my panels i had experienced some difficoults in using my very simple macro to count for Barnacle at the ROI area.
I use a subtcract background, followed by set scale, rectangular selection find maxima within tollerance, and finally analyze Particles.

Now the problem is that I will lose a lot of adult barnacles in my results becouse they will never become not even 0.5 circular after find maxima due to the close presence of ather smaller barnacle. Or becouse the edge do not are at the same brightness all over the preimeter. How can i improve the accurancy without having too much false positives?

I don´think I asked my question in a understandable way, so i put a photo of wath i have to analyze and hope someone understand me anyway.

I need counts and area to have a % difference between Prov and Control side (just a 9 square cm ROI of each side)

http://s943.photobucket.com/albums/ad273/zapatainsvezia/Barnacles%20Exemp/

thank you Emiliano Pinori
Ph.D. student
Gothemburg University (Sweden)