abstract

Gold nanoparticles of a certain uniform size are attracted to cancer cells. They can be heated using certain wavelengths of light to kill the diseased cells. In addition to cancer treatment, gold nanoparticles can be used in other areas, such as manufacturing advanced materials, energy consumption.

However, nanoparticle synthesis needs to produce consistent results so that the particles can be used for further experiments. The images taken of the resulting nanoparticles have to be processed and analyzed to determine any discrepancies in size and shape.

The study uses an image processing algorithm to measure the size of these nanoparticles. Afterwards, the study compares histograms of each individual image based on the nanoparticles’ radii in each image.

ABSTRACT

Image Analysis of Gold Nanoparticle SizesSophie Li

Department of Industrial Engineering

2013 Individual Research Project - Young Scholars Program

NANOPARTICLE IMAGES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GRAPHICAL VISUALIZATION

CONCLUSIONS

RESULTS

FUTURE WORK

MOTIVATIONo Analysis of nanoparticle self-assembly

process for more statistically robust estimates of particle sizes and shapes

o Characterization of nanoparticle sizes to determine relation between sizes over different images

o Development of a consistent nanoparticle analysis program

METHODOLOTY

o Image filtering and removal of background noise

o Watershed image segmentationo Centroid calculation and numbering of

individual nanoparticleso Area calculation of nanoparticles to

determine radiio Histogram analysis of radii distribution

across images

o The program works well for clear images with great contrast.

o Images that are too blurry or have similar colors cannot use the program to calculate nanoparticle radii without further image processing.

o The Watershed segmentation method cannot completely separate particles under certain circumstances.

o Further development of image segmentation processes

o Better image filtering algorithmso Streamlining the program to make it

run faster

The Young Scholars Program