Introduction

A summary of my mater thesis in computer science.
For a better understanding please read the 100+ pages thesis published at the university of Mons (Belgium), watch the prezi presentation at the end of this post or read the following summary.

Goal

• Test thresholding algorithm efficiency on TEM nanomaterial micrographs
• Test preprocessing effects on the efficiency of thresholding algorithm
• Test magnification effect on the efficiency of thresholding algorithm

How?

• By evaluating the precision and the introduced variation
  • Repeatability uncertainty (within day uncertainty)
  • Intermediate precision (between days uncertainty)
  • Calibration uncertainty

Purpose

“The first rule of any technology in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.
The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
― Bill Gates

In order to increase the effciciency of our work we have developed a methode using Visual Basic and javaScrit to automate the following procedures at the Tranmission Electron Microscope level.

• Stage movement control by automatically moving the stage to predefined coordinates read from a file
• Autotuning & autofocusing
• Image acquisition
• Image exporting to 16bit tif format

Flexible options

SigmaPlot histograms and reports automatically generated by “ReportGen” defines as a unique model to our final reports.

Reports in general

Report is a piece of information describing, or an account of certain events given or presented to someone.
Reports are often used to display the result of an experiment, investigation, or inquiry. The audience may be public or private, an individual or the public in general. Reports are used in government, business, education, science, and other fields.

Reports often use persuasive elements, such as graphics, images, voice, or specialized vocabulary in order to persuade that specific audience to undertake an action.

EM department reports

Since the results of our analysis have to be presented to different audience and written by different person, we have decided to give them the same look and feel.
For this purpose we have developed several templates and “application” which helps us in generating reports while reducing the work load and maintaining the common signature.

“A natural, incidental or manufactured material containing particles, in an unbound state or as an aggregate or as an agglomerate and where, for 50 % or more of the particles in the number size distribution, one or more external dimensions is in the size range 1 nm – 100 nm.”
― EU definition for nanomaterials

Domain of application

The purpose of this development is to help users to easily and rapidly identify if a material is potentially a nanomaterial by finding the percentage of particles having one or more external dimensions smaller than 100nm.

Semi-automatic single particle analysis

The developed application using “processing” allows a user to easily identify nanoparticle in a TEM micrograph by following a simple procedure.

1. Choose a representative or multiple representatives micrographs
2. Indicates any of the following
   1. The pixel size in nm if known
   2. The micrograph width in nm if known
   3. Or use the semi-automatic image calibration offered by the application
3. Use the mouse (or keyboard) to move the computed 100nm diametre circle over the particles for checking the size.
4. Hit “+” for positive and “-” for negative hits
5. Save the results
6. Move to the next micrograph

Conclusion

Results are automatically computed which help for a rapid check of micrographs.
A very helpful method for classifying boundary nanomaterials where particles have one or more external dimensions around the 100nm boundary or for aggregated and agglomerated nanomaterials where it helps to check the size and percentage of primary particles.