In our lab we use UTHSCSA ImageTool to count thousands and thousands of achenes (fruits) every year on thousands of images. It has a straightforward interface and easily does exactly what we want: click cursor on an achene, a dot appears on the achene and the counter increments by one, click cursor on next achene, a new dot appears, counter increments, repeat until all achenes are tagged, then read the counter. Voila!
We are now going to classify achenes in x-ray images as full, partially full, or empty. We need software with the capability to tag three colors and make three separate counts per image. However, we don’t need software that is complicated, and can do everything. We want software that can do this one thing efficiently.
ImageJ will work, but it is clunky, taking many steps to set up the counting on each image. Can anyone recommend software suitable for our needs?
I found a few software packages to investigate, listed below, but would appreciate any advice or leads on other software.
http://fiji.sc/Welcome
http://marvinproject.sourceforge.net/en/index.html
http://itk.org/
http://imglib2.net/
http://imagej.net/ImageJ2
http://www.jmicrovision.com/
http://loci.wisc.edu/software/imagej
http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/Analyzer/
http://icy.bioimageanalysis.org/
Click to enlarge the below images.
X-ray image of Echinacea achenes
We count 12 full, 18 empty, and zero partially filled fruits (achenes).
Image of all achenes from Echinacea head GP-6008
How many achenes do you count?
