Advanced Image Analysis Using Earth Science Data
Overview of This Module
The Introduction to Image Analysis module led you through a series of exercises and explorations to learn the basic concepts and operations of digital image processing. As you begin to use ImageJ to solve real-world problems you sometimes encounter messy or complex data, requiring more sophisticated approaches. The purposes of this module are to reinforce your basic skills and understanding, introduce you to new tools and techniques, and equip you with strategies for making your work flow more efficient.
By calling this module Advanced Image Analysis, it's important that you realize a few things:
- It will probably generate more questions than answers, and that's a good thing. That's why you need to interact with colleagues and why we provide you with a support system.
- The techniques taught are incremental additions to your current knowledge, aimed at giving you practical and effective strategies and tools for solving the types of problems encountered in everyday situations.
- The mathematics and theory presented in this module are limited to what's useful and necessary to provide a foundation for what you are learning, so please engage it—don't avoid it.
- Many of the image data sets you worked with earlier were simplified, processed, or distilled either by the course developers or the data providers. In real life, the data will sometimes be less friendly and often "messy". You'll have to dig in and get your hands dirty to understand what you're working with.
- Completing this module will NOT make you an expert, but will help take you to the next level, and to grow in confidence, insight, and skill.
- You'll get out of it what you put into it. If you do the bare minimum, that's probably all you'll learn (though it will still be substantial). If you allow yourself to experiment and explore the tools and data, your growth will be exponential.
Before You Begin
Before beginning this module, ImageJ must be installed on your computer and updated to the most recent version (1.45k at the time this page was created). If necessary, go to the ImageJ Installation Instructions page and follow the instructions for installation or updating for your operating system.
Daily Outline
Day 1—Get to Know Your Digital Image
- Part 1: Digital Images and Image Files
- Part 2: Review and Expand on Basic Stack Techniques
Day 2—Advanced Stacks, Color, and Scaling
- Part 1: Download Landsat Data
- Part 2: Scale and Crop Images
Day 3—Selection Techniques and Annotations
- Part 1: Practice Using Selection Techniques
- Part 2: Manage Regions of Interest (ROI) and Annotate Images
Day 4—Analysis Techniques in NEO and ImageJ
- Part 1: NASA NEO Data Analysis Techniques
- Part 2: Preprocessing Image Data
Day 5—Bring It All Together Into An Investigation
- Part 1: Image Math
- Part 2: Present Your Research