Computer measurement of particle diameters in cell membranes from electron micrographs

Abstract

This paper discusses measurement of particle diameters in cell membranes from electron micrographs using techniques of picture processing by computer. Characteristic features of the method proposed here are (1) to utilize a pair of bright and shadow parts of the particle image for segmenting each particle region and (2) to use the apparent structure of the particle image in a logical optimum-circle fitting to obtain the diameter of a particle. After describing the method, we reported two experiments, of which one compared computer with human results and the other examined the results for two different images.