Manual Tracking
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Author: |
Fabrice Cordeli�res, Institut Curie, Orsay (France). fabrice.cordelieres
at curie.u-psud.fr |
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History: |
2004/06/25:
First version 2005/06/15:
New features: 2D centring correction, Directionality check, Previous track
files may be reloaded, 3D features added (retrieve z coordinates,
quantification and 3D representation as VRML file). |
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Requirements: |
ImageJ 1.34k or later |
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Source: |
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Installation: |
Download Manual_Tracking.class
to the plugins folder and restart ImageJ.
Documentation in pdf format
is also available. |
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Description: |
This
plug-in allows the user to quantify movement of objects between frames of a
temporal stack, in 2D and 3D. Results
table: This
plug-in provides a way to retrieve in a table (figure 1) XY and XYZ
coordinates as well as velocity, distance covered between two frames and
intensity of the selected pixel or volume, by simply clicking on the
structure of interest. Figure 1:
Note: as
the first velocity value can't be calculated (first tracked frame where time
interval equals zero), its first displayed value will be -1, as in most of
the commercial software.
Interface: Figure 2:
The
interface is composed of 5 parts: �
Tracking
buttons: o
To
start recording one track, the user has to click on "add track". o
The
tracking is done by clicking on the structure on the image. After each mouse
click, the following image of the temporal stack is activated until the last
image is reached or the "End track" button is pressed. o
"Delete
last point" is used to erase the last recorded coordinates. o
"End
track" button should be used to stop the tracking procedure in case the
structure disappeared from the image. o
By
selecting the number in the list next to the "Delete track n�"
button, the user is allowed to erase one track from the result table. This
choice should be validated by clicking on the "Delete track n�"
button. o
"Delete
all tracks" is used to clean up the results table. �
Centring
correction: helps
the user to point the right pixel. �
Directionality: retrieves information on whether
the movement is retrograde or anterograde. �
Drawing: this section deals with the ways
to get a visual representation of the coordinates recorded in the results
table. Several displays are available: each button's function is illustrated
in the following section �
Parameters: this section contains all
required calibration values and drawing settings. Display: The
Manual Tracking module has display capacities aiming to provide either a
synthetic vision of the tracked points and/or their paths (figure 3, top), or
an overlay of one of the synthetic representations and the original image
(figure 3, bottom). Figure 3:
Retrieve
z coordinates: The
Manual Tracking module was improved to allow a simple retrieval of z
coordinates. This operation may be monitored by generating a VRML file of the
3D+time dataset (Figure 4) which can be viewed in any web browser equipped
with the appropriate plug-in (see documentation for more details). Figure 4:
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