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A high-speed tracking algorithm for dense granular media

Many fields of study, including medical imaging, granular physics, colloidal physics, and active matter, require the precise identification and tracking of particle-like objects in images. While many algorithms exist to track particles in diffuse conditions, these often perform poorly when particles...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computer physics communications 2018-06, Vol.227, p.8-16
Main Authors: Cerda, Mauricio, Navarro, Cristóbal A., Silva, Juan, Waitukaitis, Scott R., Mujica, Nicolás, Hitschfeld, Nancy
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Many fields of study, including medical imaging, granular physics, colloidal physics, and active matter, require the precise identification and tracking of particle-like objects in images. While many algorithms exist to track particles in diffuse conditions, these often perform poorly when particles are densely packed together—as in, for example, solid-like systems of granular materials. Incorrect particle identification can have significant effects on the calculation of physical quantities, which makes the development of more precise and faster tracking algorithms a worthwhile endeavor. In this work, we present a new tracking algorithm to identify particles in dense systems that is both highly accurate and fast. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach by analyzing images of dense, solid-state granular media, where we achieve an identification error of 5% in the worst evaluated cases. Going further, we propose a parallelization strategy for our algorithm using a GPU, which results in a speedup of up to 10× when compared to a sequential CPU implementation in C and up to 40× when compared to the reference MATLAB library widely used for particle tracking. Our results extend the capabilities of state-of-the-art particle tracking methods by allowing fast, high-fidelity detection in dense media at high resolutions.
ISSN:0010-4655
1879-2944
DOI:10.1016/j.cpc.2018.02.010