Applications/PaCeQuant

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PaCeQuant

PaCeQuant is available since release version 1.8.6 of MiToBo.

Latest News

We are proud to announce the first version of PaCeQuant, a tool for high-throughput quantification of shape features for pavement cells!

Related Publications

  • will be announced soon... :-)

= Name of Plugin/Operator

de.unihalle.informatik.MiToBo.apps.cellMorphology.PaCeQuant
(available since MiToBo version 1.8.6)

Main features

  • extraction of 27 characteristic shape features to quantify pavement cell shape
  • fully automatic segmentation of cell regions from input images
  • optional import of external/manual cell segmentation data
  • additional R scripts for feature visualization

Usage

To run PaCeQuant perform the following steps:

  • install MiToBo by following the instructions on the Installation page
  • run MiToBo and start the operator runner by selecting the menu item PaCeQuant from Plugins -> MiToBo

This will bring up the operator window of PaCeQuant.

Phases and Operation modes

PaCeQuant supports three different options for running listed below:

  • SEGMENTATION_AND_FEATURES: expects images as input, segments the images and extracts features
  • SEGMENTATION_ONLY: expects images as input, just segments the cell regions, no feature extraction
  • FEATURES_ONLY: works on binary or label images or ImageJ regions, extracts features for the given regions

In addition PaCeQuant can be run in either of two modes:

  • INTERACTIVE: PaCeQuant processes the data provided directly within the graphical environment of ImageJ, i.e. reads regions from the ROI manager, and directly shows results
  • BATCH: PaCeQuant processes all files (images or ROI files) in a given folder and writes results to disk

For batch mode the user can specify an input directory, in interactive mode PaCeQuant expects an input image or regions to be available in ImageJ.

Depending on the chosen phase and operation mode the graphical user interface is dynamically re-configured to show only the options relevant for the selected options.

Calibration

As PaCeQuant measures lengths and areas from the given data it is important that the tool is properly calibrated, i.e. the physical size of a pixel is known. PaCeQuant supports two calibration modes:

  • AUTO: here PaCeQuant seeks to extract calibration information from the given input data
  • MANUAL: the user can enter calibration data, i.e. the physical size of a pixel and the units to use
Configuration of Segmentation Phase

For detailed configuration of the algorithms applied during the segmentation phase the following parameters are available:

Name Description
Border Contrast Allows to select whether the boundaries of the cells are darker or brighter than the background.
Heuristic for Gap Closing During segmentation sometimes small gaps in the boundaries remain which can be closed by PaCeQuant applying one of the following heuristics:
  • WATERSHED (recommended): calculates a distance image from the binary boundary image extracted so far and then applies a watershed transformation to find additional boundaries
  • NAIVE_HEURISTIC: just calculates the distance between two end-points and links them if the distance is below a threshold
Unit for Size Thresholds Unit in which the size thresholds for valid regions are specified, i.e. either PIXELS or MICRONS.
Minimal Size of Cells Extracted cells which are too small can automatically be excluded by specifying a minimal size for valid cells.
Maximal Size of Cells Extracted cells which are too large can automatically be excluded by specifying a maximal size for valid cells.
Configuration of Feature Extraction Phase
Name Description
Feature Extraction
Analyze lobe types? Activates the optional classification of individual lobes into two-cell or three-cell types.
Additional Configuration Parameters
Name Description
Draw region IDs to output image?
Verbose
Show/save additional results?
Show/save feature stack?

Sample data