Slide Set Commands and Plugins

Slide Set commands operate on data tables. They take input values from columns of an existing data table and save results in a new data table. Each row in the input table may produce one or more row in the results table, depending on the command.

Slide Set commands are implemented as ImageJ plugins. A core set of commands for common analysis tasks are included. Some general ImageJ commands can also be run with Slide Set, although there are certain restrictions. Custom Slide Set commands can be created with only slight changes from the normal ImageJ plugin development process.

Core Slide Set commands

  • Bin Regions — Sort a set of regions of interest into bins.

  • Border Statistics — Calculate signal intensity along region of interest borders in 3-channel RGB images.

  • Count Intersections — Count the number of intersections between region of interest borders and a binary mask.

  • Create Mask Image — Generate a raster representation of regions of interest.

  • Create Points Table — Extract coordinates from point regions of interest.

  • Filter Regions — Filter a set of regions of interest using a second set of regions of interest as a mask.

  • Find Maxima — Identify local maxima in an image.

  • Manders' Coloc. Coefficients — Calculate Manders' colocalization coefficients between two channels within regions of interest.

  • Math & Round — Basic mathematical functions for numeric data.

  • Otsu Segmentation — Segment an image based on an automatically computed threshold value.

  • Pearson's Correlation — Calculate correlations between two channels within regions of interest.

  • Region Overlap — Calculate the area of overlap between ROI sets.

  • Region Statistics — Calculate signal intensity within regions of interest.

  • ROI Lengths — Calculate lengths of line-based regions of interest.

  • Stack Utilites — Create maximum intensity projections and re-slice image stacks.

  • Threshold Segmentation — Segment an image into regions of interest based on threshold values.

  • Trainable Weka Segmentation — Segment an image using the Trainable Weka Segmentation plugin.

  • Unmix Absorbances — Separate an RGB image into two absorbance components.

Running Slide Set commands

To run a command, select the table to use for input values, then choose the desired command from the Table > Run Slide Set Command menu.

First, you will be asked to select how the command's input parameters will be filled. Each input parameter is shown next to a drop-down box containing columns from the input table, or the option to enter a constant value. Only columns with an appropriate data type will be listed. If no column has an appropriate data type, the only option will be to enter a constant value. Constants are entered in the text fields to the right of the drop-down boxes.

Next, you will be asked how to handle each of the commands output values. Most output types, including numeric and text outputs, can be stored directly in the results table. Some outputs, such as images, need to be stored as separate files, with the names of these files stored in the results table. For these outputs, you will need to specify a directory (relative to the location of the project file), base file name (individual files will be numbered sequentially), and a file extension (for images, the file extension determines the image file format that will be saved). There is also the option to discard values from any command output.

In addition to selecting how command output values should be handled, you will have the option to select columns from the input table to be copied to the results table. To do so, select Include inputs in results, then choose the columns that you wish to copy.

Once handling of command inputs and outputs has been set, the command will be run for each row in the input table, and the results stored in a new table. As the command runs, its progress, as well as any errors, will be tracked in the log window. The results table will appear in the table tree once the command completes.

Running other commands with Slide Set (Experimental)

In addition to the core commands, Slide Set can run general ImageJ commands, although there are several restrictions limiting which commands will run successfully. First, the command must be an ImageJ2 plugin. ImageJ1 plugins, which are distinguished in the menus by a microscope icon, are not compatible with Slide Set. Additionally, all of the command's input and output parameters must use data types recognized by Slide Set. Image, numeric, and text parameters are generally compatible. Other data types are less likely to be recognized.

To run a general ImageJ command, select Run Other Command from the Table menu. This will show a list of all commands and plugins available in ImageJ. Select the command you wish to run, the press OK. Slide Set will then attempt to run the selected command in a similar manner to Slide Set commands. The command's progress and any errors will be shown in the log window.

Creating custom Slide Set commands

Slide Set is designed to be extensible, and creating new Slide Set commands requires only a slight variation on the usual ImageJ2 plugin format. Custom handlers for data types not recognized by Slide Set are also possible. More information is available in the API documentation included with the source code.

Reusing commands with command skeletons

Once a sequence of commands has been applied to a table, they can be exported as a command skeleton which can be automatically applied to another similarly structured data table. For example, if Threshold Segmentation was used to identify regions in a set of images and Region Statistics was used to analyze the results, creating a command skeleton will allow that sequence of commands, with identical settings, to be applied to another data set. Command skeletons can be created from any linear sequence of commands, and applied to any table that has an identical column structure to the original data.

To create a command skeleton, select the final result table of the sequence of commands you wish to repeat from the tree. Choose Table > Command Skeleton > Export... from the menu bar, and create a file used to save the command skeleton.

To apply a command skeleton, select the a table from the tree which will contain the source data for the command series. This table may be in an entirely different Slide Set project from the project used to create the command skeleton. However, the source table must have an identical column structure to the table used as source data when the command skeleton was created. Choose Table > Command Skeleton > Apply... from the menu bar, and select the command skeleton file to apply. Each command will be automatically applied to the source table using the pre-saved settings.

Data ┐
     │ (command A)
  Result 1 ┐
           │ (command B)
        Result 2 ┐
                 │ (command C)
              Result 3

Example: Select table Result 3 to create a command skeleton that will apply commands A, B, and C in sequence. Selecting table Result 2 will create a command skeleton that will apply only commands A and B.