Data Analysis and Programs

The Princeton Instruments CCD camera and supplied Winview software records raw 12 bit/pixel data and stores this information directly on the computer hard drive (as .SPE files). The output files can be very large (> 200 MB) and 'noisy' (the images have a low signal to noise ratio).

I've writen a Java program (SPEView) that allows me to play back and analyse the movies using several image processing algorithms. The software automatically outputs the results of the analysis in the form of .GIFs embedded in html pages. The software can also save short segments of the movies as a sequence of .GIF images which can be played back using a web browser. This allows several long (>20 minute) movies to be cataloged and reviewed.

A subset of the autogenerated output of SPEView is available here.
The pages contain several Javascript functions that allow the user to page through and animate several thousand GIF files in an organized way. This program works best with a very fast connection as each gif in the series downloads seperately. The system is usually used locally on a fast university network.

An example of one of the autogenerated analysis pages is available here.

A detailed discussion of the image processing algorithms used for a early DOS based version of the software is available here. (This is a link to an html version of my thesis, some of the images are not linked.)