2014 Volume 29 Issue 1 Pages 21-27
We propose a method that uses three-dimensional data to directly determine the pores (holes) in the skeleton of a spherical radiolarian. Our goal is to automatically determine both the number and the distribution of the pores. We used a set of grid points on a spherical surface to approximate the skeletal structure, which was obtained from a micro X-ray CT scan. Next, we counted the number of pores by using an algorithm for counting clusters on a grid. Finally, we used Voronoi tessellation to determine the distribution of the pores. For noisy data, a smoothing filter was applied before the procedure. We applied our method to three real data sets, and the results showed that our method worked well.
