FracLac for ImageJ

FracLac is an open source, free plugin for IMAGEJ , biological image analysis software written and made available to the scientific community by Wayne Rasband of the NIH). Use FracLac to automatically analyse morphological complexity of single or multiple images or parts of images (e.g., different cells in one image). FracLac is suitable for images of biological structures (e.g., neurons or microglia, cell nuclei), theoretical fractals, textures, and more. You can use it to investigate various features of complexity such as the fractal dimension, lacunarity, local connected fractal dimension, and multifractality, as well as some other features such as circularity and the convex hull.

FracLac was written by Audrey Karperien, School of Community Health, Charles Sturt University, as part of a master's thesis. The original box counting code was based on algorithms by Herbert Jelinek, PhD, Neuroscience, School of Community Health, Charles Sturt University with guidance from Wayne Rasband (NIH). The convex hull algorithm was originally contributed by Thomas R. Roy, University of Alberta, Canada.

Installation instructions: Download the Frac_Lac.jar file into the ImageJ plugins folder, restart ImageJ, then run FracLac. A shortcut appears in the Plugins>Fractal Analysis menu.

Download the most recent release of FracLac from the ImageJ plugins site.

The download is precompiled, but includes source files in the jar archive.

How to use it:

Simply put the downloaded .jar file in the ImageJ plugins directory.
Start ImageJ, select the Plug-ins>Analyze menu, and click on FracLac_(current version).
Before analyzing an image or ROI, you must select from the popup the type of analysis you want. Clicking on the type you want opens a panel for setting options (choose OK for the default settings).
Once a type of analysis is chosen (the message at the bottom of the panel tells what type is selected), analyze the currently active image or ROI by clicking the DO CURRENT IMAGE button.
To analyze multiple files, click on the DO NEW FILES button. A file opening dialog will appear, from which several files can be selected at once (shift and select or control and select). When the files are highlighted, click OPEN on the dialog and they will be analyzed using the most recent settings.

Results:

FracLac delivers the results in a text file and graphically if you choose to display graphs. To continue analysing images, use the buttons on the FracLac Panel.

FracLac delivers:

fractal dimensions
the generalized dimension spectrum over a set of Q values
lacunarity
other measures based on the convex hull enclosing a structure (e.g., circularity and span of a biological cell such as a neuron).
raw data including frequency distributions
colour coded graphic of variation in the fractal dimension over an image
standard error and correlation for regression statistics
for an outline of the ImageJ results file that can be read as a text file or imported to a spreadsheet, click here.