Tom, much thanks! I have a (goofy) movie I made from some of my data, that shows what I was using your surface masking tools for. I can send it to you if you want to take a look; be forewarned that I am not much of a visual artist. -Jeff Tom Goddard wrote:
Hi Jeff,
The Chimera mask command code can be adapted to calculate the average thickness of a slab defined by two surfaces. I've attached the adapted Python code. You select the surfaces then open the script and it reports the mean thickness, standard deviation of thickness, min/max thickness and number of thickness samples used. The script contains a projection axis which should be perpendicular to the slab and a grid step which defines the grid spacing. The thickness is measured on a grid perpendicular to the axis and only grid points where the projection axis intersects the surfaces at least twice are used. You have to edit the script (at the bottom) to set the projection axis and grid step to appropriate values. Those values could be automatically set using the Python code of the inertia ellipsoid script I gave you earlier. Tested in Chimera version 1.2498 on a spherical surface.
Tom
Jeff wrote:
hi Tom,
I'd like to compute the 'average distance' between two surfaces to calculate the width of a cellular compartment (have attached an image, the two surfaces delineating the compartment are colored blue).
one way that has been suggested to me is to calculate the volume between the two surfaces, and then just divide by a mean path length along one of the surfaces. I know that chimera has a volume calculation tool for an isosurface, and was wondering if I could use the surfaces you see to do a volume calculation (and, if so, how I would go about capping those surfaces to create a closed surface). If able to calculate the volume that way, I could just use the path length of a contour (which I have) that generated one of the two surfaces to derive the "average width".
-- ------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Triffo Auer Group, Donner Lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Raphael Group, Bioengineering Department, Rice University Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), Baylor College of Medicine phone (Berkeley): 510-486-7940 fax (Berkeley): 510-486-6488