Water Research Symposium, info on Particle Inspection

Reading this document from the 2003 Water Research Symposium, I found some interesting background to the use of Particle Inspection and Image Analysis. The file is here.

The title of the section I found interesting:

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY SUSPENDED-SEDIMENT SURROGATE RESEARCH,
PART II: OPTIC TECHNOLOGIES
John R. Gray, Danie l J. Gooding, Theodore S. Melis,
David J. Topping, and Patrick P. Rasmussen
U.S. Geological Survey
415 National Center, Reston, VA 20192
jrgray@usgs.gov

And here is some of the text...

"... Photo-Optic Imaging Data as Laboratory and Stream Suspended-Sediment Surrogates: Photo-optic imaging of fluids was pioneered by the medical industry in the 1980’s for determining red blood cell concentrations. This technology, which is used to delineate, characterize, and enumerate organic particles in blood samples, is being adapted to quantify the concentration and selected size and shape characteristics of suspended sediments in water samples. Research to apply photo-optic imaging for laboratory (Gooding 2001) and field applications is centered at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington (U.S. Geological Survey 2003).

Photo-optic imaging has the capability to provide in real time suspended-sediment concentrations, and measurements of the size and shape of individual particles in addition to statistics on size and shape for all particles. Laboratory applications include concentration and size- fraction determinations in addition to shape computations. Potential field applications include automatic point measurements and manual measurements as part of a modified depth-integrating sampler (Edwards and Glysson 1999, Gray et al. 2002)."