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PMS Digital Imaging Group

* New Item: Syncroscopy 2005 Calendar Competition.

Those of you who have attended recent society meetings may be aware that the PMS has been donated a copy of Syncroscopy's Auto-Montage.
This is a computer program that takes in a series of microscope images which have been produced at different focus levels in an object.
Auto Montage can automatically stitch together the in-focus parts of each photo in the series to produce a single view with enhanced depth of field. Additionally, because the program has information about which layer each in-focus part comes from, it can generate pseudo-stereo pairs, or ,if preferred, anagylph views (stereo pictures viewed through red-green spectacles).

In practice, the PMS copy will only work on a computer fitted with a dongle (a hardware key plugged into a USB port) and we are permitted to have only one dongle. This makes it impractical to pass the application around to club members.
To cope with this the Society will provide a service, to PMS members only, to process suitable series of images. In the first instance contact Mick Chaplin.

Images need to be provided on a CD. The results can then be returned, also on CD and the best results can be shown on this web-site. For those interested in trying this out guidelines are provided.

Note: if members are interested, other aspects of digital image processing can be included, e.g. side-by-side stitching of images to produce large high resolution images.

There are 2 programs similar to Auto-Montage, which you may wish to investigate:

• A Russian program which is considerably cheaper, though still expensive. for the amateur.
• A free program - follow the Alan Hadley link on the Micscape site, or go directly to Alan's web site - Combine Z link.

If you investigate these further, or find others, please let us know.

Auto-Montage in Operation

To illustrate the operation of Auto-Montage, 3 out of a series of 36 photomicrographs are shown below. They are of a house fly eye viewed sideways on.

The whole series of 36 images was imported into Auto-Montage, which compiled the composite image shown below.

The 3-D anaglyph version of the composite image requires red-green spectacles to appreciate. You may need to increase the monitor brightness to compensate for the light loss caused by the spectacles.

More montaged images

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