Possible medical applications of IRAF
Jim Bearden wrote on Jun 06, 2007
I'm interested in possible uses of the IRAF software for medical
applications, specifically analyzing low-resolution images of blood
cells, a la Dr. Howard Shapiro's "Cellular Astronomy" proposal. Do you
know if he, or anyone else, has done this already? If so, do you know
what part(s) of the package they were able to use, and in what ways? Any
information you could provide on this possible application would be
welcome. Thank you--
applications, specifically analyzing low-resolution images of blood
cells, a la Dr. Howard Shapiro's "Cellular Astronomy" proposal. Do you
know if he, or anyone else, has done this already? If so, do you know
what part(s) of the package they were able to use, and in what ways? Any
information you could provide on this possible application would be
welcome. Thank you--
Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jun 06, 2007
Hi Jim,.
IRAF has been used in the past for medical imaging (e.g. cat brain slices at UCLA and mammography are two I remember) and while I'd heard of the 'Cellular Astronomy' paper before I couldn't say specifically that Shapiro ever used IRAF. A similar site you should look at is http://astromed.iic.harvard.edu/.
As for IRAF, I think what you'd be after are tasks in the photometry packages for detecting and measuring objects in an image (in your case, cells). The DAOPHOT package has a task DAOFIND that can do this, likewise there is a more general STARFIND task that does something similar. We also have a catalog-generation package called ACE, parts of which are in the system already (but hidden) but this is mostly still in development as an external package. The counterpart the that is the SExtractor task (contact Emmanuel Bertin
(bertin@iap.fr) or see http://terapix.iap.fr/rubrique.php?id_rubrique=91/) while also produces a detection catalog.
I'm afraid there's a limited amount we know that could help specifically with the blood-cell aspect, but please post any questions you have as well as any success in using IRAF in this way.
Cheers,
-Mike
IRAF has been used in the past for medical imaging (e.g. cat brain slices at UCLA and mammography are two I remember) and while I'd heard of the 'Cellular Astronomy' paper before I couldn't say specifically that Shapiro ever used IRAF. A similar site you should look at is http://astromed.iic.harvard.edu/.
As for IRAF, I think what you'd be after are tasks in the photometry packages for detecting and measuring objects in an image (in your case, cells). The DAOPHOT package has a task DAOFIND that can do this, likewise there is a more general STARFIND task that does something similar. We also have a catalog-generation package called ACE, parts of which are in the system already (but hidden) but this is mostly still in development as an external package. The counterpart the that is the SExtractor task (contact Emmanuel Bertin
(bertin@iap.fr) or see http://terapix.iap.fr/rubrique.php?id_rubrique=91/) while also produces a detection catalog.
I'm afraid there's a limited amount we know that could help specifically with the blood-cell aspect, but please post any questions you have as well as any success in using IRAF in this way.
Cheers,
-Mike
Jim Bearden wrote on Jun 06, 2007
Mike--
Thanks for the information--- some of the packages, especially "SExtractor", look like they could be useful in this kind of application--
Jim
Thanks for the information--- some of the packages, especially "SExtractor", look like they could be useful in this kind of application--
Jim
Last post on Jun 06, 2007