Издательство Springer, 2014, -520 pp.This book is entitled ‘Image Analysis in Earth Sciences’. The images that we will be analyzing may show features that we can see with our unaided eyes, or may contain detail that can be obtained only through optical, electron or scanning probe microscopes. We will not be looking at illustrative or ‘subjective’ images such as drawings or paintings, but at scientific or ‘objective’ images such as those captured with photographic or digital cameras. By the same token, what we want to do is not to analyze a subjective impression, but to assess and quantify the information that is contained in an image.
The book is about ‘Image Analysis’ because image processing software is used to perform the analysis. We will use this software in two ways: one to support and speed up manual image analysis tasks, such as measuring the size and shape of objects identified in the image; the other being what one might call ‘true’ digital analysis, in the sense that this employs methods that cannot be performed manually, no matter how much time or effort we might like to spend on the task.
The field of application is ‘Earth Sciences’ and so the images are typically of a geological nature—geomaterials composed of inorganic grains or crystals, and in particular rock surfaces or thin sections. Of course, it does not matter to the image analysis software if the objects in the images are sand grains, living cells, molecules or atoms; to the computer they are nothing but quasi–circular shapes and the same image analysis methods can be applied, at least in principle, to all. From this point of view, the book may be useful not only in the field of geosciences but also in the biological and medical sciences as well as in the physical sciences, materials science and engineering. By focusing on images that are typically encountered in the course of geological investigations, the book includes some additional and specific methods that are useful only in the context of geological studies in structural geology, sedimentology or petrology.Part I Looking at Images.
Images and Microstructures.
Acquiring Images.
Digital Image Processing.
Pre-processing.
Part II Segmentation: Finding and Defining the Object.
Segmentation by Point Operations.
Post-processing.
Segmentation by Neighborhood Operations.
Image Analysis.
Test Images.
Part III Measuring Size and Volume.
Volume Determinations.
2-D Grain Size Distributions.
3-D Grain Size.
Fractal Grain Size Distributions.
Part IV Quantifying Shape and Orientation.
Particle Fabrics.
Surface Fabrics.
Strain Fabrics.
Shape Descriptors.
Part V Spatial Relationships.
Spatial Distributions.
Spatial Frequencies.
Autocorrelation Function.
Part VI Orientation Imaging.
Crystal Orientation and Interference Color.
Computer-Integrated Polarization Microscopy.
Orientation and Misorientation Imaging.
