Progress of my work always takes place either via my own insights into the use of my prototype software, or via turning more of my software concepts into functional code.

www.3dm-images.net contains some 120 original images with their “3dm re-visualizations” to illustrate the step that is necessary before quantifications can be made.

www.3dm-bilder.net is the German equivalent, but with completely different content.

Both sites require user registration. Please send an email to sabine at 3d-metrics.com if you want to contribute or have any questions.

Rathenow is a small town West of Berlin, in the heart of the Havelland, one of the protected regions in Brandenburg.

Rathenow has been called the Town of Optics, since one of its citizens was given the royal privilege of creating an “optical industrial establishment” in 1801. By 1896, 193 optical companies were operational.

The Long Night of Optics on June 6th will bring together 19 companies in the Centre of Culture, which will be connected via an “optical mile” with the Optics Park. The complete programme of activities can be viewed on this flyer in German.

3D Metrics will have a stand next to Askania, the local producer of microscopes, where we’ll show how our “software glasses” can be fitted to microscopic pictures.

A telescopic picture of the moon was derived from a historic telescope that can be visited in the Optics Park. It has been re-visualized by our software as follows:

First photo of the moon taken on March 30th, 2009

One of the possible re-visualizations

Last night I discovered that the Institute of Physics (IoP) has a London and South East Branch that organises public lectures.

Professor Richard Leach from NPL explained what ‘traceable’ means: linking back to the basic SI units of m / kg / sec. Well, my 3d metrics are conceptually traceable. In practice, they are a scale independent software framework to establish domain-specific qualitative measuring units.

Since I had spoken with him before, he had looked at my site and said that he needs proof that I’m actually ‘measuring’ something. He referred me back to Dr. Nick McCormick who had supplied me with the first image I ever processed.

Sprayed surface

Here’s another re-visualization I produced from that image – with ’software vision’ and ‘pixel resolution’:

'Software vision' allows for 'seeing more'

At the time, I had only just discovered that I could conceivably use my insights for processing images, for I had talked with Uwe Braun, a German entrepreneur who wanted me to examine possible stains in car varnishings.

Since then I have learned a lot more about the connections between the physics of microscopes, the digitisation of images and visualization the capabilities of my prototype software.

Since Richard suggested I talk to Nick again who had given me the first image at the time, I now produced a systematic sequence of re-visualizations that hopefully shows ‘in a nutshell’ what I have to offer.

Yesterday I attended a workshop that was designed to form consortia to access a European money pot via the Technology Strategy Board. I wrote about it on this website in progress, but this may be deleted soon.

The 3D Metrics logo expresses dynamic and harmonic movement in 3D space. The new site 3d-metrics.com links to my web presence across my ‘professional life with zest’, ’social life with meaning’ and personal accounts.

Software for Seeing What You Want to Know is, so far, still only on my laptop, and, for the purpose of forecasting financial data, on the demo site www.3dmetrics.net.

Complex data and digital images appear in a ‘new light’ thanks to my prototype software that ‘layers’ complex data and ‘re-visualizes’ digital images.

3D Realities are re-presented either by measurements and time series or by images. The software shows more visual detail and quantifies hitherto unquantifiable qualities on 2D screens:

• complex data can reveal more in ‘layers’ and be used for decision support in expert systems
• digital images show more visual depth and perspective, while this ’software vision’ can process hundreds and thousands of images for comparison and selections
• new qualitative measures can be derived when interpreting what we are looking for using ’software vision’ and ‘image metrics’.

The Terahertz image of a hand is input into my prototype software as an illustration of the “re-visualization” that the software achieves.

Terahertz image of hand, re-visualized with my prototype software

The wavy re-visualization was produced from this reference image that was given to me by the National Physical Laboratories (NPL), responsible for measuring in the UK. As a ‘reference image’ it can be used for calibrating microscopes.

Greyscale reference image

Grey reference image re-visualized

The third re-visualization also stems from an NPL image: a sprayed surface that gives rise to much more visual depth and metric detail than the original.

Sprayed surface

Revisualization of sprayed surface

The image serves as a sample for the capabilities resulting from the software:

• ’seeing more detail’ with human eyes
• ‘processing more images’ with ’software vision’
• ‘interpreting more’ with expert portals that rely on the decision support provided by ‘image metrics’.

The historic company from Jena in the former DDR came to town with a suite of state of the art microscopes on show. It was great to get not only an overview, but also first hand insights into the techniques of building microscopes. And thus I have been thinking about how to express my generic software methods such that they look useful to them.

As a first step, I visited their Imaging Applications and picked a few images to re-visualize – for more metric detail and new visual perspectives as usual – for experts to interpret. Ultimately, of course, their familiarity with their subject matter should be embedded into an expert system. The feedback with our software will then result in less skilled people able to use the system.

So far, I am doing my ‘number acrobatics’ by-hand, feeding the prototype software that I never intended to use for image handling. That’s the difference between large funded institutions and corporations and an inventor’s software-aided mind!

Here’s an original image that I re-visualized:

An image collected with a ZEISS LSM 510 Meta

And here’s my re-visualization as proof of the principle that my software methods represent the building blocks for a new tool of investigation – adding value to the physics and engineering of Zeiss’ microscopes.

The re-visualization for the human eye

“Software vision” can lead to automating image analysis by selecting and ranking images based on our quantifications.

I submitted the above example also to their Application Library.

Here’s another original which I had to turn to match my re-visualization.

Adult Olfactory Bulb Granule Cell Integration

Value is added by more metric details for quantitative comparisons

However, some of the ‘branches’ can’t be seen because they are below the surface that has been created by the blue blackground.

Terahertz Systems and Industrial Applications was the event organised by the Electronics KTN in collaboration with TeraNova. It was a great overview of the state of the art.

I had put the Poster for Terahertz Conference together, trying to put into A1 format what I’m trying to convey over and over again: the deep genericness of my new approach to digital images.

So I came up with the title ‘Software Vision’ for Digital Microscopy and ‘Image Metrics’ for Automated Analysis.

I found this terahertz image of a hand on the website of Vision Systems – also thanks to Google images. The instrument that produced it is called the StarTiger imager.

Terahertz image of hand, re-visualized with my prototype software

The Electronics KTN is organising an event on Terahertz Systems and Industrial Applications at the Royal Society on Feb. 25th, and I am thinking about a poster for that.

Google brought me to this story from Thruvision who are going to give a presentation.

The image shows a person “seen” through the clothes.

Terahertz camera sees through clothes

When “re-visualized” with my demonstrator software, the image is unfortunately on its head, and it is too tedious at this stage to change the bits of code I’m using.

The basis for comparisons via 'metric details'