Bones are complex nanocomposites composed mainly by hydroxyapatite nanocrystals.
Different factors characterize its morphology: composition, length, orientation, roughness.
To increase our understanding of the tissue morphology at this fundamental lever of organization,
a new method based on the straight skelonization of the images obtained by electronic microscopy is proposed.
The method detects and measures the length and angularity of any straight edge of over the image.
The technique resolved several test patterns independent of size and angle of rotation.
Several samples obtained from different substrates were analyzed with the method.
The results were consistent with those values obtained from conventional methods.
Although still limited as a laboratory application, shape analysis has the potential to provide insight
into the mechanisms of crystal growing and may provide a basis for specifications or guidelines for
the manufacturing of biomaterial for bone tissue engineering.
Software and DataSet
Software
An implementation of the proposed technique (for Microsoft Windows platform) is avalaible by clicking
Line Detector
To run the program, just download it, unzip the file and start by double clicking LineDetector1_4.0_64.
Then, select an image by browsing the filesystem. A emerging window will appear, were the user can
configure the parameters for the execution of the software (See figure 1).
Fig 1. Parameter Configuration Window
Parameters of the Program
Preprocessing
Select one of the following actions: smoothing (remove noise), enhancing (enhance structures), thresholding (binarize)
For phantom images deselect those actions. For composite images, select all of them.
Straight Line (SL) Parameters
For Straight Line extraction, select Line Detector.
You can tunned the detection process by modifying the following parameters:
- Number of angles.- Number of angles to check for a SL.
- Minimun SL Length.- Estimated minimum value of the length of the SL to be detected. SLs with length values less
than this could be not detected and they do not appear at the end of the proccess.
