Particle Inspection - First Pass

My friend Ken has been working on some interesting software lately. You can see some images below that this software analyzes. The particles you see are tiny, as in one millionth of a meter. They are suspended in a water sample, which is flowing past a camera.

Fig. 1

This first image is an example of a background image. These are particles already in the camera's field of view before a new water sample is presented.

Fig. 2

In this image we see particles that are suspended in the water sample that we have put in front of the camera. Notice the squiggly particle (middle, left) that was also present in the background image. Now comes the cool part...

Fig. 3

When we run the Particle Inspection software on this image, the particles outlined in yellow are analyzed. Notice that the squiggly and the other background images are left out of the analysis, since they are not part of the current sample.

I'll talk more later about the analysis the software does, how the samples are presented to the camera, and how this technology is useful in the water resources world.

*Disclaimer: This project is still developing, and I am giving an explanation as a novice. Ken, feel free to comment with any corrections or clarifications.