Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the point of this collection of functions?

A1. These are functions which I have often found necessary for
basic image processing. By implementing them as MEX functions they
are *much* faster than M-file equivalents. This means that you
have the convenience of MATLAB with the speed of C.

Q2. The demo file KFtoolsdemo.m gives an error. What should I do?

A2. The MEX files must be compiled before they can be used. The
M-file mexKFtools.m will do this for you. Run it first. Also
ensure that the functions are all in MATLAB's path.

Q3. What is watershed segmentation? The help does not give enough
information.

A3. Try a web search for "watershed segmentation". Also see if you
can get hold of the following journal article:  L. Vincent and P.
Soille. Watersheds in digital spaces: An efficient algorithm based
on immersion simulations in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis
and Machine Intelligence, 13(6):583-598, 1991.

Q4. What is the point of the function getboundarymex?

A4. It is often far more efficient to measure shape features etc.
from a binary object in polygon format (list of pixel corner
coordinates) than as an image of pixels.

Q5. The functions bndread and bndwrite don't work with my data.
What's wrong?

A5. These functions are only intended to work with data in the
format of the output from the getboundarymex function. This
assumes that the centres of pixels have integer coordinates. This
means that the corners have coordinates of n+0.5 where n is an
integer.

Q6. How and what would I use these functions for?

A6. At the moment, the best way to find out is to examine the
KFtoolsDemo.m script.

Q7. I have not set up the MATLAB path for KFtools. What should I
do?

A7. From the MATLAB command window go to [file] [set path] and
then set up the path to include the KFtools files. You must do
this.

Q8. I don't have the imshow function. Where do I get it?

Q9. The imshow function is part of the image processing toolbox.
The latest version of KFtools should work without it. Get it at
http://www.dip.ee.uct.ac.za/~kforbes/KFtools/KFtools.html