Elliptical Fourier Analysis - Overview of Program Structure

CartesianDiatom-EFA is run from the Main Menu selection CDiatom, which is located at or near the right end of the Main Menu, by selecting Outlines. Submenu items are provided for importing data from external files, conducting the elliptical Fourier analysis and reproducing outlines.

The elliptical Fourier analysis spans 5 Excel worksheets: OrigOutline, EFA, EFAResults, EllipDescr and ReproOutl (left to right, respectively, in the adjacent figure). Detailed explanations of each worksheet and forms associated with it are available by following the worksheet's link below. Overview of this EFA program.

Worksheet & Form	Contents & Operations
OrigOutline	Imports x,y coordinate outline data generated by tpsDIG2 and ImageJ (or by typing or cut/paste) and stores the original coordinates of outlines; source of data for EFA worksheet
EFA	Smooths and samples original coordinates, normalizes outlines with respect to location, orientation, size and trace origin, previews smoothing, sampling and results of EFA on a single selected valve, sets parameters for and executes EFA on single or all valves, exports results to EFAResults worksheet, and displays chart of outlines of original, smoothed-and-sampled and reproduced outlines (for k and k-1 harmonics)
EFAResults	Accumulates the results of the EFA, stores basic valve descriptors, identification codes, processing information, elliptical Fourier coefficients and harmonic amplitudes
EllipDescr	Accumulates the results of the EFA expressed as the "elliptical descriptors" of Schmittbuhl et al. (2003), which emphasize familiar parameters of ellipses to describe the effects of the harmonics
ReproOutl	Reproduces outlines of selected valves based on their Fourier coefficients from EFAResults worksheet

Updated 1 July 2009 RKE