Automated length measurement based on the Snake Model applied to nanoscience and nanotechnology

This work describes the development of an automated method for metrological purposes to measure the length of filament-shaped objects. The proposed methodology can determine the length of the object(s) of interest using image segmentation, where the Snake Model (SM) was applied. The measurement procedure starts from the segmentation step, where a mathematical morphology technique called erosion is applied, resulting in a thin curve representation with only two endpoints (skeleton). A set of 3x3 kernels was defined for the erosion procedure. The piecewise linear approximation concept was also employed to measure the total length of an object, based on the dimension of the pixel (unitary length) that composes the skeleton. The accuracy of the algorithm was evaluated using a sort of DNA filaments from Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) images.