MINCBLOB(1)

✨ MINCBLOB 💅

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about mincblob from the MINC User's Guide and honestly? she's iconic. 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

mincblob — calculate blobs from minc deformation grids 🫧

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

mincblob [<options>] <in1>.mnc

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So mincblob will calculate simple statistical metrics of a minc deformation grid file, and those metrics are all about local volume change. no cap. and where do these deformation grid files come from, you ask? typically they're produced by minctracc — that's her origin story. ✨

Right now there are 4 deformation grid metrics to choose from, and let me introduce the whole squad:

• trace
• determinant
• translation
• magnitude

The first two relate to different estimates of local volume change. The third one is a measure of how consistent movement is in a direction, but — plot twist — without a local change in volume. And the last one calculates the magnitude of the local deformation vector. 🌈

Here's the important tea though: these metrics are all calculated with respect to a vector's immediate neighbours. And no smoothing of the field is performed as part of this calculation, so if you want a smooth result, you gotta smooth or blur your input grid files first. that's just the rules, bestie. 😭

💅 OPTIONS 💅

Note that options can be specified in abbreviated form (as long as they're unique) and can be given anywhere on the command line. slay, flexible queen. 💫

🌟 General options 🌟

• -clobber — Overwrite an existing file. just bulldoze right over it, no thoughts. 🔥
• -noclobber — Don't overwrite an existing file. this is the default, because we respect boundaries here. 🫶
• -verbose — Print out extra information (more than the default). she's talkative and we love that for her. 💬
• -trace — Compute the areas within the deformation field that equate to volume increase or decrease (+ve or -ve dilation). Dilation is defined as the trace of the deformation field. Thus it should range between -1..1, with -1 being compression and 1 being dilation. This measure, while fast, is essentially a sum of partial derivatives in all three directions. ⚡
• -determinant — This computes the same metric as -trace but with greater accuracy, because the local Jacobian matrix is first estimated. The first order determinant of the Jacobian is then returned. glow-up fr fr. ✨
• -translation — Compute the areas within the deformation field that equate to translation. Translation is defined as:

trans = arccos( A.B / |A|.|B| ) * e^- (|A|-|B|)

Thus it should range between 0..1, with 1 being "translation". 💫

• -magnitude — Compute the magnitude of the local deformation vector. short, sweet, powerful. 👑

🧚 Generic options for all commands 🧚

• -help — Print summary of command-line options and exit. when you're lost, she's got you. 🗺️
• -version — Print the program's version number and exit. 🏷️

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Andrew Janke

📜 COPYRIGHTS 📜

• Program: Copyright © 2000 by Andrew Janke
• Man page: Copyright © 2001 by Peter Neelin

okay that's the whole page, bestie, you ate it up. 💖 this was the MINC User's Guide situation, dated $Date: 2004-05-20 21:52:09 $ — yes she's a vintage icon, a classic, and she still serves. go calculate some blobs. 🎀🦋🌸