Re: Is manual thresholding methods accepted by scientific journals?

Posted by karo03 on Dec 10, 2014; 9:11am
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Is-manual-thresholding-methods-accepted-by-scientific-journals-tp5010814p5010874.html

Perhaps my two cents to this thread.

Thresholding is and was the problem in image analysis. However, every analysis necessitates the definition of the region of interest. And this definition is the crucial point and is highly subjective. Thresholding, mostly applied to intensity images, is only one method of decision. Still, deciding which pixel belongs to which class is always a thresholding applied to a certain value.

"Is manual thresholding methods accepted by scientific journals?" is not a question with a yes or no answer. It is necessary to consider the succeeding measuring steps.
E. g. If the thresholded pixels are directly counted (area) or measured in terms of connected objects (number), hence are directly influenced by the thresholding, a manual thresholding needs a good discussion of its influence.
If the thresholded pixels are used for more elaborated measurements, like the number or area of certain substructures per connected set of pixels (number/object, area/object), the direct influence or thresholding is reduced. Still the possible loss of interesting objects as well as the unbalanced number of selected objects has to be thoroughly considered in the discussion.

To conclude, the quality of the description of the method and its discussion are the main points for acceptance of the method proposed.
And, in my experience, this is too often forgotten from prospective authors.

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