Image processing in Perl graphic applications

Image processing in Perl graphic applications

By Dmitry Karasik (‎McFist‎) from Copenhagen.pm
Date: Thursday, 24 July 2003 16:50
Duration: 20 minutes
Language:

The perl language is a powerful tool for creation of portable programs
on a wide range of platforms. Support of the graphic user interface
is not included in perl, and is provided by several stand-alone graphical
toolkits. The most popular modules are Perl-Tk and Wx, based on multi-platform
libraries, correspondingly Tcl-Tk and wxWindows, both written in C.
The toolkit Prima was written to provide features non-existent in
the other toolkits, and it was used as a base for development of research
applications with needs of both graphic interface and image processing.

The target biological research comprises a study of the effects of
applying various peptide-based preparations on neuron culture, with
subsequent quantification of morphological changes in cells. The software
provides both manual and automatic quantification, where the former
depends on graphic interface functionality, and both on numerical
processing.

The toolkits Prima, PDL, and IPA are used to demonstrate perl capabilities
in the intersection area between image processing and graphic user
interface. Prima is a platform-independent perl graphic toolkit with
an object oriented interface. Its features include an extensive set
of perl-coded widgets, a wide range of image types and conversion
routines, and a visual builder. IPA is an image processing toolkit
based on Prima functionality, and provides a set of common two-dimensional
operators. PDL is a popular numerical toolkit featuring efficient
storage of numerical arrays. It contains a wide spectrum of calculational
functionalities, including a set of image processing operators designed
to work with two and more dimensional data.

The work illustrates the usage of Prima, IPA, and PDL libraries for
image conversion and display.