What inspired this Wish List Request?
Preparing for a customer demo with a group interested in doing image analysis in JMP.
Please describe the new or improved feature or solution you would like to see.
The ruler tool should be a slam dunk for simple image measurements in JMP. It's missing important capabilities to make it functional for anything beyond geographic measurements. To correct this two things need to be addressed:
1. The ability to put in a custom image scale. In the example image, I should be able to use the ruler to measure the scale bar, and then perform an action (right click context menu maybe?) to tell JMP that distance is 20um. JMP would then know that scale and report future measurements in that graph using the appropriate scaling factor.
2. The ruler needs to be persistent or have an option to automatically create an annotation with the measured distance and a line showing where the measurement was taken.
3. We really need an "image window" like what John Ponte created with his image analyzer add-in.
What would the value be to you and/or other users if this new feature is provided?
These capabilities are foundational for us to say that we have image analysis in JMP. There are customers that have lots of images, but most of them do work on one or two images and simply measure features in those images.
Is this an external customer request?
Related to a customer pain point at Corning. I have encountered this several times over the years at various accounts.
Is there a competitive software package that has this feature or solution that we should be aware of?
ImageJ is the standard. But it's a lot to learn to do this basic stuff. There is a gap we can fill here.
Will this impact a renewal, expansion, or adoption at a customer, and does this put an account at risk if we do not address this?
This is an area that we can provide a simple path for expansion within a customer. We are ~80% of the way there.
@MikeD_Anderson The calibration part is currently possible with the Image to Table Extension (shameless plug, I guess, but I'd be happier to see this baked in to JMP). The persistent annotation would be a very welcome addition.
@Jed_Campbell - I'm demoing the method you're using but with an old add-in from John Ponte. It still requires transform columns in the data table and rebuilding the image as a scatterplot or heat map. The point I'm making is that with image analysis softwares like ImageJ you'd say each pixel in the image is 7.75um and the ruler would be calibrated directly. No extra columns.
This is what it looks like in imageJ. Draw a line, Select Analyze > Select Scale... give it the value for the line length. Done.
@MikeD_Anderson The Image to Table extension has a different method for scale calibration (it doesn't currently assume an aspect ratio). It does the transform for you, and doesn't require rebuilding the image.
I don't want to hijack this wish list item discussing improvements to the extension (i.e., I could totally add this method). Rather, if your customer needs something today, there might be something usable today until we get these features baked into JMP.
