Dear Dominque

You comments are well taken. However, IDL is a general purpose data
analysis package that the user can program to make all the
measurements you mention. For example, the 3 D volume is simply the
detetcted area (in each slice) times the distance between slices...

Regards

Mark Cannell

On Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:31:50 +0000 Dominique Miller wrote:


> Hi all
>
> Interesting discussion about 3D software.  It is a shame though that
> very few people seem to be able to distinguish between 3D software
and
> what is sometimes called 2.5D software.  I believe IDL is in the
2.5D
> category.  Very few of these packages seem to do any kind of image
> analysis and most can only do the most rudimentary processing.  This
is
> of course great if all you want to do is look at pretty 3D images.
If
> you want to do any kind of 3D analysis, which I would have thought
would
> be what most users of confocal microscopes would want to do, why not
pay
> a little extra to be able to extract more relevant information such
as
> volume, surface area, moments of order, feret dimensions, principal
axes
> lengths and orientation etc.
>
> How many people out there actually know the difference between 2.5D
and
> 3D?  Please let me know I would really be interested.
>
> Best regards
>
> Dominique Miller
>
>
>
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