VrBalance

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VR BALANCE (vrbalance.exe)

Overview Error! Bookmark not defined. Using VrBalance Error! Bookmark not defined. Command-Line options

Type: Stand-alone Batch Application

Current Release: 1.0

Image Balancing Application.

Overview

This is a stand-alone program that uses the same methods as VrMosaic to balance images across an entire project, but works in a batch mode with any set of input images. VrBalance can be operated from the command-line without any user interaction by using appropriate input arguments. Type VrBalance –h for a list of command-line options. If started without any arguments, VrBalance will prompt for input parameters.

Using VrBalance

Without any parameters passed, VrBalance will start by display the following parameters dialog box.

Intensity Adjustment Type

Sets the computation method to be used when adjusting the image intensity.

Additive mode seems to work best on the widest range of images, but there are some cases where multiplicative may give better results. Multiplicative mode will tend to increase the contrast of the images. Only try multiplicative if you are getting poor results with additive.

None	Do not apply any intensity adjustment
Additive	Additive computation mode.
Multiplicative	Multiplicative computation mode

Color Adjustment Type

Sets the computation method to be used when adjusting the image color.

Additive mode seems to work best on the widest range of images, but there are some cases where multiplicative may give better results. Multiplicative mode will tend to increase the contrast of the images. Only try multiplicative if you are getting poor results with additive.

None	Do not apply any color adjustment
Additive	Additive computation mode.
Multiplicative	Multiplicative computation mode

Sample method

Sets the method used when sampling data from the images

Mean	Use the mean sample method.
Median	Use the median sample method.

Intensity computation level

Sets the computation level used when computing the intensity adjustment. The medium setting doesn't try to fit the data as closely as full. In most cases, full is the best option, but if you have an image with a lot of lakes or other non-matching areas, medium might produce better results.

No adjustment	No adjustment is applied to the intensity.
Medium	A medium computation is used.
Full	A full computation is used.

Color computation level

Sets the computation level used when computing the color adjustment. The medium setting doesn't try to fit the data as closely as full. In most cases, full is the best option, but if you have an image with a lot of lakes or other non-matching areas, medium might produce better results.

No adjustment	No adjustment is applied to the color.
Medium	A medium computation is used.
Full	A full computation is used.

Samples per image

Sets the number of samples that are taken from each image. The default is 200. Increasing this value on very large images may produce better results because it will look at a larger percentage of the image. This has a direct relation on computation speed. Anything under 20 will probably not give reliable results.

Sample size

This is the square size of the area looked at for each sample. The default is 50, resulting in a 50x50 pixel sample.

Margin percentage

This controls how much of the outer image is ignored during processing. If your images have areas around the edges that contain invalid image data (such as fiducials), then this setting can be used to force those areas to be ignored. A value of 0 means do not ignore any image data, a value of 10 would ignore the outer 10% of the image.

Std. Deviation Filter

This setting limits the pixels to those that fall around the mode of the sample. For example, if set to 1.0 and the sample was a normal distribution, then only 66% of the data (around the middle value) would be used for the computation. This can be used to help filter out undesirable parts of an image.

0.0 = No filter

1.0 std = 66% of a normal distribution,

2.0 std = 95% of a normal distribution

3.0 std = 99.7% of a normal distribution)

After selecting Ok in the parameters dialog box, the following dialog is displayed to control output filename options.

After selecting Ok in the output filenames dialog box, the following dialog is displayed to allow the input images to be selected.

After selecting Ok, the images will be processed and adjusted output images will be created.

Command-line options

It is possible to run VrBalance from the command-line for non-interactive processing of images. The current command-line options are as follows (typing vrbalance –h will always display the most recent command-line options).

VRBALANCE [options] [image(s)]

where options are:

-s Silent mode. Does not prompt for parameters.

-l filename Load balance parameters from file.

-o directory Output directory.

-p postfix Postfix to add to each output image name.

-r prefix Prefix to add to each output image name.

[images] Optional list of images to process.

Will display image selection dialog if left blank.

Example:

vrbalance -l myparams.vba -o c:\balance\out\ -o out_ c:\balance\*.tif

(Balance all TIFF images in the c:\balance directory, using the balance parameters stored in myparam.vba. Write the resulting images to the c:\balance\out directory.)