A cancer research team needs your help!

[brendle]

Hello everyone,

I am a researcher at the University of Illinois studying the causes of cancer metastasis. Part of our research involves compiling tons of tiny pictures of cancer cells into one large complete image. I come to you as a person completely ignorant to almost all things related to photography and image software.

The camera we are working with is connected to a microscope. Each picture we take with the camera is approximately 1/200th of the total size of the image we desire at the end. Essentially, we take a picture, adjust the microscope's viewing frame a tiny amount, and take another image until we have taken pictures of the entire petri dish we are imaging. Every image has a small area of overlap with its surrounding images so that they can be compiled together as one large seamless image. Currently, we have been using photoshop to overlap each image manually until we have a gigantic completed image at the end. However, this process is extremely long and tedious. The amount of pictures we have taken in total may take weeks to compile manually.

As scientists, none of us are very familiar with any sort of image processing software. We really do not even know where to begin. I am not even sure if this is the right place to ask. I come to you for help because I thought you might be able to point us in the right direction by telling us if some sort of software exists that could automatically compile large amounts of images that have a slight overlap. It seems possible, since each image has at least some area in common with the images that surround it, but our lack of experience is a great hindrance.


Sorry for the length of this post and I am very grateful for any help you may be able to provide.

 

[Flash Harry]

There is software for stitching panoramas together but I haven't used them as we tend to do similar to yourselves and its only a couple of shots usually, why not try contacting Adobe with your needs, I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't already on with something similar for a future version of their software. H

 

[Peano]

Although I don't do panoramic images, my understanding is that most of the stitching programs will only stitch together a single row of images (side by side).

One exception appears to be PTgui. I haven't used it, but it looks promising for the problem you describe:

Photo stitching software 360 degree Panorama image software - PTGui

EDIT:

Yes, PTgui seems to be your friend. Did a little more searching and found this pdf file:

Quick Guide for Stitching Microscope Images.

EDIT 2:

If you pursue PTgui, they have a support forum here where you can ask questions. And here are some questions and answers from users who have used PTgui successfully with microscopy stitching.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Jean-François Rauzier - The Image Is In The Details - Digital Photo Pro | DigitalPhotoPro.com

Here is someone who does something similar to your work and, from what I understand, he does it the same way you do. I imagine that means there is no software available to make the process any easier.

But you could always get in touch and ask. The man is on FaceBook and if you google him, there's a bunch of articles about him so I'm sure you could find a way to get in touch. Although it might be useful to have a friend who speaks french helping you out. He may not speak english.

 

[Peano]

Here is someone who does something similar to your work and, from what I understand, he does it the same way you do. I imagine that means there is no software available to make the process any easier.

Hellooooooooooooooo ....

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Yes, I saw your post and should have written "I imagine that means there is no software available to make the process any easier that he thinks does a good enough job."

I'm sure you noticed that panoramas seems to be what the software was designed for. And the text after the "However" makes me think you will be doing manual edits more often then not with projects requiring perfect integration of the different images.

Not that it's not worth checking into. One never know.

 

[brendle]

Thanks for all of your great input everyone! I will be looking into all of these suggestions. I am very grateful for the help you were all willing to provide!

 

[MountainPaul]

If you could take your pictures with no overlap you could use my stiching script for Photoshop.
PS-Scripts • View topic - File Sticher