Relate Objects assigns relationships; all objects (e.g. speckles) within a parent object (e.g. nucleus) become its children.
This module allows you to associate
child objects with
parent objects. This is useful for counting the number of children associated with each parent, and for calculating mean measurement values for all children that are associated with each parent.
An object will be considered a child even if the edge is the only part touching a parent object. If an child object is touching multiple parent objects, the object will be assigned as a child of all parents that it overlaps with.
Available measurements
Parent object measurements: - Count: The number of child sub-objects for each parent object.
- Mean measurements: The mean of the child object measurements, calculated for each parent object.
- Distances: The distance of each child object to its respective parent.
Child object measurements:
- Parent: The label number of the parent object, as assigned by an Identify module.
See also: ReassignObjectNumbers.
Settings:
Select the input child objects
Child objects are defined as those objects contained within the
parent object. For example, when relating speckles to the
nuclei that contains them, the speckles are the children.
Select the input parent objects
Parent objects are defined as those objects which encompass the
child object. For example, when relating speckles to the
nuclei that contains them, the nuclei are the parents.
Calculate child-parent distances?
Choose the method to calculate distances of each child to its parent.
- None: Do not calculate any distances.
- Minimum: The distance from the
centroid of the child object to the closest perimeter point on
the parent object.
- Centroid: The distance from the
centroid of the child object to the centroid of the parent.
- Both: Calculate both the Minimum and
Centroid distances.
Calculate per-parent means for all child measurements?
Select Yes to calculate the per-parent mean values of every upstream
measurement made with the children objects and stores them as a
measurement for the parent; the nomenclature of this new measurements is
"Mean_<child>_<category>_<feature>".
For this reason, this module should be placed after all Measure
modules that make measurements of the children objects.
Calculate distances to other parents?
(Used only if calculating distances)
Select Yes to calculate the distances of the child objects to
some other objects. These objects must be either parents or
children of your parent object in order for this module to
determine the distances. For instance, you might find "Nuclei" using
IdentifyPrimaryObjects, find "Cells" using
IdentifySecondaryObjects and find "Cytoplasm" using
IdentifyTertiaryObjects. You can use Relate to relate
speckles to cells and then measure distances to nuclei and
cytoplasm. You could not use RelateObjects to relate speckles to
cytoplasm and then measure distances to nuclei, because nuclei is
neither a direct parent or child of cytoplasm.
Parent name
(Used only if calculating distances to another parent)
Choose the name of the other parent. The RelateObjects module will
measure the distance from this parent to the child objects
in the same manner as it does to the primary parents.
You can only choose the parents or children of
the parent object.